When using Docker, we start with a base image. We boot it up, create changes and those changes are saved in layers forming another image.
So eventually I have an image for my PostgreSQL instance and an image for my web application, changes to which keep on being persisted.
So the question is: What is a container?
An instance of an image is called a container. You have an image, which is a set of layers as you describe. If you start this image, you have a running container of this image. You can have many running containers of the same image.
You can see all your images with docker images whereas you can see your running containers with docker ps (and you can see all containers with docker ps -a).
So a running instance of an image is a container.
From my article on Automating Docker Deployments:
Docker Images vs. Containers
In Dockerland, there are images and there are containers. The two are closely related, but distinct. For me, grasping this dichotomy has clarified Docker immensely.
What's an Image?
An image is an inert, immutable, file that's essentially a snapshot of a container. Images are created with the build command, and they'll produce a container when started with run. Images are stored in a Docker registry such as registry.hub.docker.com. Because they can become quite large, images are designed to be composed of layers of other images, allowing a miminal amount of data to be sent when transferring images over the network.
Local images can be listed by running docker images:
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED VIRTUAL SIZE
ubuntu 13.10 5e019ab7bf6d 2 months ago 180 MB
ubuntu 14.04 99ec81b80c55 2 months ago 266 MB
ubuntu latest 99ec81b80c55 2 months ago 266 MB
ubuntu trusty 99ec81b80c55 2 months ago 266 MB
<none> <none> 4ab0d9120985 3 months ago 486.5 MB
Some things to note:
- IMAGE ID is the first 12 characters of the true identifier for an image. You can create many tags of a given image, but their IDs will all be the same (as above).
- VIRTUAL SIZE is virtual because it's adding up the sizes of all the distinct underlying layers. This means that the sum of all the values in that column is probably much larger than the disk space used by all of those images.
- The value in the REPOSITORY column comes from the
-tflag of thedocker buildcommand, or fromdocker tag-ing an existing image. You're free to tag images using a nomenclature that makes sense to you, but know that docker will use the tag as the registry location in adocker pushordocker pull. - The full form of a tag is
[REGISTRYHOST/][USERNAME/]NAME[:TAG]. Forubuntuabove, REGISTRYHOST is inferred to beregistry.hub.docker.com. So if you plan on storing your image calledmy-applicationin a registry atdocker.example.com, you should tag that imagedocker.example.com/my-application. - The TAG column is just the [:TAG] part of the full tag. This is unfortunate terminology.
- The
latesttag is not magical, it's simply the default tag when you don't specify a tag. - You can have untagged images only identifiable by their IMAGE IDs. These will get the
<none>TAG and REPOSITORY. It's easy to forget about them.
More info on images is available from the Docker docs and glossary.
What's a container?
To use a programming metaphor, if an image is a class, then a container is an instance of a class—a runtime object. Containers are hopefully why you're using Docker; they're lightweight and portable encapsulations of an environment in which to run applications.
View local running containers with docker ps:
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
f2ff1af05450 samalba/docker-registry:latest /bin/sh -c 'exec doc 4 months ago Up 12 weeks 0.0.0.0:5000->5000/tcp docker-registry
Here I'm running a dockerized version of the docker registry, so that I have a private place to store my images. Again, some things to note:
- Like IMAGE ID, CONTAINER ID is the true identifier for the container. It has the same form, but it identifies a different kind of object.
docker psonly outputs running containers. You can view all containers (running or stopped) withdocker ps -a.- NAMES can be used to identify a started container via the
--nameflag.
How to avoid image and container buildup?
One of my early frustrations with Docker was the seemingly constant buildup of untagged images and stopped containers. On a handful of occassions this buildup resulted in maxed out hard drives slowing down my laptop or halting my automated build pipeline. Talk about "containers everywhere"!
We can remove all untagged images by combining docker rmi with the recent dangling=true query:
docker images -q --filter "dangling=true" | xargs docker rmi
Docker won't be able to remove images that are behind existing containers, so you may have to remove stopped containers with docker rm first:
docker rm `docker ps --no-trunc -aq`
These are known pain points with Docker, and may be addressed in future releases. However, with a clear understanding of images and containers, these situations can be avoided with a couple of practices:
- Always remove a useless, stopped container with
docker rm [CONTAINER_ID]. - Always remove the image behind a useless, stopped container with
docker rmi [IMAGE_ID].
While it's simplest to think of a container as a running image, this isn't quite accurate.
An image is really a template that can be turned into a container. To turn an image into a container, the Docker engine takes the image, adds a read-write filesystem on top and initialises various settings including network ports, container name, ID and resource limits. A running container has a currently executing process, but a container can also be stopped (or exited in Docker's terminology). An exited container is not the same as an image, as it can be restarted and will retain its settings and any filesystem changes.
In easy words.
Images -
The file system and configuration(read-only) application which is used to create containers. More detail.
Containers -
These are running instances of Docker images. Containers run the actual applications. A container includes an application and all of its dependencies. It shares the kernel with other containers and runs as an isolated process in user space on the host OS. More detail.
Other important terms to notice:
Docker daemon -
The background service running on the host that manages the building, running and distributing Docker containers.
Docker client -
The command line tool that allows the user to interact with the Docker daemon.
Docker Store -
Store is, among other things, a registry of Docker images. You can think of the registry as a directory of all available Docker images.
A picture from this blog is worth a thousand words.
(For deeper understanding please read this.)
Summary:
- Pull image from Docker hub or build from a Dockerfile => Gives a Docker image (not editable).
- Run the image (
docker run image_name:tag_name) => Gives a running Image i.e. container (editable)
Maybe explaining the whole workflow can help.
Everything starts with the Dockerfile. The Dockerfile is the source code of the Image.
Once the Dockerfile is created, you build it to create the image of the container. The image is just the "compiled version" of the "source code" which is the Dockerfile.
Once you have the image of the container, you should redistribute it using the registry. The registry is like a git repository -- you can push and pull images.
Next, you can use the image to run containers. A running container is very similar, in many aspects, to a virtual machine (but without the hypervisor).
This post explains many basic things about docker containers (it is talking about Docker and Puppet, but there are many concepts that can be used in any context)
Workflow
Here is the end-to-end workflow showing the various commands and their associated inputs and outputs. That should clarify the relationship between an image and a container.
+------------+ docker build +--------------+ docker run -dt +-----------+ docker exec -it +------+
| Dockerfile | --------------> | Image | ---------------> | Container | -----------------> | Bash |
+------------+ +--------------+ +-----------+ +------+
^
| docker pull
|
+--------------+
| Registry |
+--------------+
To list the images you could run, execute:
docker image ls
To list the containers you could execute commands on:
docker ps
I couldn't understand the concept of image and layer in spite of reading all the questions here and then eventually stumbled upon this excellent documentation from Docker (duh!).
The example there is really the key to understand the whole concept. It is a lengthy post, so I am summarising the key points that need to be really grasped to get clarity.
Image: A Docker image is built up from a series of read-only layers
Layer: Each layer represents an instruction in the image’s Dockerfile.
Example: The below Dockerfile contains four commands, each of which creates a layer.
FROM ubuntu:15.04
COPY . /app
RUN make /app
CMD python /app/app.py
Importantly, each layer is only a set of differences from the layer before it.
- Container. When you create a new container, you add a new writable layer on top of the underlying layers. This layer is often called the “container layer”. All changes made to the running container, such as writing new files, modifying existing files, and deleting files, are written to this thin writable container layer.
Hence, the major difference between a container and an image is the top writable layer. All writes to the container that add new or modify existing data are stored in this writable layer. When the container is deleted, the writable layer is also deleted. The underlying image remains unchanged.
Understanding images cnd Containers from a size-on-disk perspective
To view the approximate size of a running container, you can use the docker ps -s command. You get size and virtual size as two of the outputs:
Size: the amount of data (on disk) that is used for the writable layer of each container
Virtual Size: the amount of data used for the read-only image data used by the container. Multiple containers may share some or all read-only image data. Hence these are not additive. I.e. you can't add all the virtual sizes to calculate how much size on disk is used by the image
Another important concept is the copy-on-write strategy
If a file or directory exists in a lower layer within the image, and another layer (including the writable layer) needs read access to it, it just uses the existing file. The first time another layer needs to modify the file (when building the image or running the container), the file is copied into that layer and modified.
I hope that helps someone else like me.
Dockerfile > (Build) > Image > (Run) > Container.
Dockerfile: contains a set of docker instructions that provisions your operating system the way you like, and installs/configure all your software's.
Image: compiled Dockerfile. Saves you time from rebuilding the Dockerfile every time you need to run a container. And it's a way to hide your provision code.
Container: the virtual operating system itself, you can ssh into it and run any commands you wish, as if it's a real environment. You can run 1000+ containers from the same Image.
A container is just an executable binary that is to be run by the host OS under a set of restrictions that are preset using an application (e.g., docker) that knows how to tell the OS which restrictions to apply.
The typical restrictions are process-isolation related, security related (like using SELinux protection) and system-resource related (memory, disk, cpu, networking).
Until recently only kernels in Unix-based systems supported the ability to run executables under strict restrictions. That's why most container talk today involves mostly Linux or other Unix distributions.
Docker is one of those applications that knows how to tell the OS (Linux mostly) what restrictions to run an executable under. The executable is contained in the Docker image, which is just a tarfile. That executable is usually a stripped-down version of a Linux distribution (Ubuntu, centos, Debian etc) preconfigured to run one or more applications within.
Though most people use a Linux base as the executable, it can be any other binary application as long as the host OS can run it. (see creating a simple base image using scratch). Whether the binary in the docker image is an OS or simply an application, to the OS host it is just another process, a contained process ruled by preset OS boundaries.
Other applications that, like Docker, can tell the host OS which boundaries to apply to a process while it is running include LXC, libvirt, and systemd. Docker used to use these applications to indirectly interact with the Linux OS, but now Docker interacts directly with Linux using its own library called "libcontainer".
So containers are just processes running in a restricted mode, similar to what chroot used to do.
IMO what sets Docker apart from any other container technology is its repository (Docker Hub) and their management tools which makes working with containers extremely easy.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(Linux_container_engine)
The core concept of docker is to make it easy to create "machines" which in this case can be considered containers. The container aids in reusability, allowing you to create and drop containers with ease.
Images depict the state of a container at every point in time. So the basic workflow is:
- create an image
- start a container
- make changes to the container
- save the container back as an image
Simply said, if an image is a class, then a container is an instance of a class is a runtime object.
As many answers pointed this out: You build Dockerfile to get an image and you run image to get a container.
However, following steps helped me get a better feel for what Docker image and container are:
1) Build Dockerfile:
docker build -t my_image dir_with_dockerfile
2) Save the image to .tar file
docker save -o my_file.tar my_image_id
my_file.tar will store the image. Open it with tar -xvf my_file.tar, and you will get to see all the layers. If you dive deeper into each layer you can see what changes were added in each layer. (They should be pretty close to commands in the Dockerfile).
3) To take a look inside of a container, you can do:
sudo docker run -it my_image bash
and you can see that is very much like an OS.
A Docker image packs up the application and environment required by the application to run, and a container is a running instance of the image.
Images are the packing part of docker, analogous to "source code" or a "program". Containers are the execution part of docker, analogous to a "process".
In the question, only the "program" part is referred to and that's the image. The "running" part of docker is the container. When a container is run and changes are made, it's as if the process makes a change in it's own source code and saves it as the new image.
As in the programming aspect,
Image is a source code.
When source code is compiled and build, it is called as application.
Simillar to that "when instance is created for the image", it is called as "Container"
Image is an equivalent to a class definition in OOP and layers are different methods and properties of that class.
Container is the actual instantiation of the image just like how an object is an instantiation or an instance of a class.
In short:
Container is a division (virtual) in a kernel which shares a common OS and runs an image (Docker image).
A container is a self-sustainable application that will have packages and all the necessary dependencies together to run the code.
A Docker container is running an instance of an image. You can relate an image with a program and a container with a process :)
An image is to a class as a container to an object.
A container is an instance of an image as an object is an instance of a class.
Dockerfile is like your bash script that produce a tarball (Docker image).
Docker containers is like extracted version of the tarball. You can have as many copies as you like in different folders (the containers)
For a dummy programming analogy, you can think of Docker has a abstract ImageFactory which holds ImageFactories they come from store.
Then once you want to create an app out of that ImageFactory, you will have a new container, and you can modify it as you want. DotNetImageFactory will be immutable, because it acts as a abstract factory class, where it only delivers instances you desire.
IContainer newDotNetApp = ImageFactory.DotNetImageFactory.CreateNew(appOptions);
newDotNetApp.ChangeDescription("I am making changes on this instance");
newDotNetApp.Run();
I think it is better to explain at the beginning.
Suppose you run command: Docker run hello-world. what happens ?
it calls docker cli which is responsible to take docker commands and transform to call docker server commands. as soon as docker server gets command to run image, it checks weather images cache holds an image such name. suppose hello-world do not exists. docker server goes to docker hub ( docker hub is just a free repository of images ) and asks, hey Hub, do you have an image called hello-world ? Hub responses - yes i do. then give it to me, please. and download process starts. as soon as docker image is downloaded, docker server puts it in image cache.
So before we explain what is docker image and docker container, let's start with introduction about operation system on your computer and how it runs software.
when you run for example chrome on your computer, it calls operation system, operation system itself calls kernel and asks, hey i want to run this program. kernel manages to run files from your hard disk.
now imagine that you have two programs chrome and nodejs. chrome requires python version 2 to run and nodejs requires python version 3 to run. if you have installed only python v2 on your computer, only chrome will be runned.
to make both cases work, somehow you need to use operational system feature known as namespacing. namespace is feature which gives you opportunity to isolate processes, hard drive, network, users, hostnames and so on.
So, when we talk about an Image we actually talk about file system snapshot. An image is a physical file which contains directions and metadata to build specific container. Container itself is an instance of an image, it isolates hard drive using namespacing which is available only for this container. So container is a process or set of processes which groups different resources assigned to it.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23735149/what-is-the-difference-between-a-docker-image-and-a-container