Container Basics for Infrastructure Engineers

In this lab, you will connect to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 (RHEL) virtual machine to install and configure the Docker environment. The modules will guide you from core concepts, such as running and managing individual containers, to more advanced topics like resource limiting and persistent data storage with volumes. The lab culminates in using Docker Compose to build and deploy complex, multi-container applications, including a Python web application connected to a MongoDB database and a full TIG monitoring stack.

Upon completion of this lab, you will be able to:

• Install and configure the Docker Engine on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) server.
• Run, view, manage, and interact with single containers using the Docker CLI.
• Control container resources by applying CPU and memory limits with cgroups.
• Persist container data independently of the container lifecycle using Docker volumes.
• Build custom container images from a Dockerfile.
• Deploy multi-container applications, such as a Python web app with a database, using Docker Compose.
• Deploy a complete TIG (Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana) monitoring stack as a containerized service.

Software: Docker Engine, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 (RHEL), PuTTY, Git, Python, NGINX, Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana, MongoDB.

Virtual Hardware: The lab environment consists of a RHEL virtual machine, a Windows virtual machine, and an IOS-XRV device, all interconnected on an internal network.