A Beginner-Friendly Introduction to Containers, VMs and Docker

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If you’re a programmer or techie, chances are you’ve at least heard of Docker: a helpful tool for packing, shipping, and running applications within “containers.” It’d be hard not to, with all the attention it’s getting these days — from developers and system admins alike. Even the big dogs like Google, VMware and Amazon are building services to support it.

Regardless of whether or not you have an immediate use-case in mind for Docker, I still think it’s important to understand some of the fundamental concepts around what a “container” is and how it compares to a Virtual Machine (VM). While the Internet is full of excellent usage guides for Docker, I couldn’t find many beginner-friendly conceptual guides, particularly on what a container is made up of. So, hopefully, this post will solve that problem 🙂

Let’s start by understanding what VMs and containers even are.

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