Technical requirements
To complete the exercises in this chapter, you'll need Git and Docker on your local workstation. For Mac and Windows users, please install Docker Desktop (https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop) as this is how most people using Docker use it on their local workstations. You need to learn more about the options before you choose a production deployment tool.
Depending on what avenues you explore, you may also want to establish accounts with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Digital Ocean. Most of these services have fairly generous free tiers that may allow you to experiment without spending much money, especially if you only use the services for a short duration. When considering what sort of environment might be suitable for your application, it helps to have multiple options. If you do create resources in the cloud, don't forget to terminate resources that you are done with or are not planning to keep, or you could receive a nasty surprise when you see the bill. Most cloud providers have a billing alert system. Please consider setting up an alarm that will notify you if your spending exceeds your budget.
If you want to explore hosting a more complex on-premises setup, or use a bare-metal hosting service such as Packet (https://www.packet.com/), you may need one or more server computers that meet the specifications for running Docker or OpenStack on bare-metal computer hardware.
The GitHub repository for this chapter is https://github.com/Packt-Publishing/Docker-for-Developers – please see the chapter5 folder inside.
Check out the following video to see the Code in Action: