The map

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01What a container isProcesses, kernels and images

02Building imagesFast, small, multi-arch and pinned

03Running containersUsers, networks, state, signals, stacks

04Next: system designSame ideas, at service scale

Sidecar and service meshLibrary ↗Cheap containers made it practical to run a proxy beside every service. The sidecar pattern, and the service mesh built from it, is the next step.

Graceful degradationLibrary ↗Handling SIGTERM well is graceful shutdown for one process. This is the same idea for a whole system when a part of it goes away.

01What a container isProcesses, kernels and images0/3
02Building imagesFast, small, multi-arch and pinned0/4
03Running containersUsers, networks, state, signals, stacks0/5
04Next: system designSame ideas, at service scale
- Sidecar and service meshLibrary ↗Cheap containers made it practical to run a proxy beside every service. The sidecar pattern, and the service mesh built from it, is the next step.
- Graceful degradationLibrary ↗Handling SIGTERM well is graceful shutdown for one process. This is the same idea for a whole system when a part of it goes away.

Written for Docker Engine 27 to 29 and Compose v2; changes in Engine 28 (port publishing hardening) and 29 (the containerd image store by default on fresh installs) are called out where they matter. The examples were built and run on Docker Engine 29.1.3 with Docker Desktop 4.55 on Apple silicon, and the outputs shown come from those runs.

Where this path leads

Kubernetes: how the cluster keeps your app running →How Kubernetes turns a few YAML objects into a running, self-healing service: the control loops behind it, how pods are placed, rolled out and reached, how probes and resource settings keep them healthy (or take them down), and how state, security and operators fit in.

Docker: what a container really is

The map

Where this path leads