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Docker Containers

How does Docker work?

Explore the inner workings of Docker: architecture and key components.

The diagram below shows the architecture of Docker and how it works when we run “docker build”, “docker pull” and “docker run”.

There are 3 components in Docker architecture:

  • Docker client

    The docker client talks to the Docker daemon.

  • Docker host

    The Docker daemon listens for Docker API requests and manages Docker objects such as images, containers, networks, and volumes.

  • Docker registry

    A Docker registry stores Docker images. Docker Hub is a public registry that anyone can use.

Let’s take the “docker run” command as an example.

  • Docker pulls the image from the registry.
  • Docker creates a new container.
  • Docker allocates a read-write filesystem to the container.
  • Docker creates a network interface to connect the container to the default network.
  • Docker starts the container.