If you still haven't checked that Docker thing, but need (or want) to get started with containers, this tutorial is for you. No prior knowledge of Docker is needed. If you know how to interact with the UNIX command line, you're set! Some demos will feature code snippets in Python, Ruby, or even C; but you will be perfectly fine even if your language of choice is Bash.

After a short introduction explaining the "big idea" behind containers, we will use the Docker CLI to start our own containers, and everything will be hands on. You will be provided with a pre-configured Docker environment running on a cloud VM (you won't need to setup Docker or Vagrant or VirtualBox on your machine). 

In this workshop, you will setup your own Docker cluster, and use it to deploy and scale a sample application architectured around microservices. We will explain the concepts and features of SwarmKit (the library powering Swarm mode), and give guidelines and best practices to setup your cluster. Then, we will cover more advanced operational topics.

Chapters will include:

- SwarmKit concepts: services, workers, managers, and more;

- setting up a cluster and deciding how many and which nodes should be managers;

- deploying a self-hosted registry;

- scaling services using different placement strategies;

- load balancing HTTP traffic with the built-in IPVS load balancer;

- rolling out new versions of the code;

- automating deployment tasks with Compose;

- sending container logs to a self-hosted ELK stack;

- collecting and graphing metrics with Prometheus;

- transparent encryption of container network traffic;

... and more!