Containerization

🎯 Goal

Learn how to containerize a PHP web application using Docker, deploy it to Docker Hub, and share it with others for seamless deployment across different environments.

📋 Prerequisites

Before beginning this exercise, you should:

• Have PHP installed on your local machine (version 7.4 or higher)
• Have Docker Desktop installed and currently running
• Have a Docker Hub account (free at https://hub.docker.com)
• Have basic understanding of command line operations
• Have the PHP application source files ready (either copy from the Appendix at the end of this tutorial or use your own PHP files)

📚 Learning Objectives

By the end of this exercise, you will:

🎯 Goal

Learn how to provision an Azure Virtual Machine with Docker pre-installed, then deploy containers from Docker Hub including both public images (nginx) and your own containerized applications from the previous exercise.

📋 Prerequisites

Before beginning this exercise, you should:

• Have an Azure subscription with credits available
• Have Azure CLI installed locally (version 2.0 or higher)
• Have completed the previous Docker exercise (PHP application pushed to Docker Hub with multi-architecture support)
• Have basic understanding of Linux command line
• Have SSH client available (built-in on Mac/Linux, use PowerShell on Windows)

⚠️ Note: If you haven’t built your Docker image with multi-architecture support, refer to Step 3 in the previous tutorial for instructions using docker buildx

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📚 Learning Objectives

After completing this exercise, you will be able to:

• Design and implement a production-grade multi-container architecture
• Configure nginx as a reverse proxy for PHP-FPM
• Use Docker Compose to orchestrate multiple containers
• Implement container networking and service dependencies
• Apply security best practices for production deployments

🔧 Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop installed and running
• Basic understanding of web servers and PHP
• Completed Exercise 1 (Dockerizing a PHP Web Application)
• Source files from Exercise 1 (src/ directory with PHP application)

📋 Architecture Overview

In this exercise, we’ll create a production-ready setup with: