Run containerized applications on any server
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Self-hosted community projects are constantly growing in number, many of them operating under an open-source or fair-code license that saves you from paying costly subscriptions or usage-based fees.
With Docker, you can run any number of self-hosted applications on a standard web server or local workstation in completely separate environments using partitioned resources. Thanks to Docker Hub, you also gain access to a whole trove of community-maintained applications and projects that require very little effort to get working.
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll show you how to self-host Docker apps using any Linux-based workstation or VPS server, all the way from installing Docker Engine to launching containerized applications with Docker Compose. We’ll even talk about some popular Docker apps to get you started, if you’re unsure what this setup can do for you. Let’s jump in.
Docker is an open-source platform that packages your software into separate containers.
A container, in case you were wondering, is exactly what it sounds like — a walled-off section of your server or device that contains all the code, libraries, and settings associated with an application. Containers get their own separate resource allocations too, so you can be sure that an application isn’t drawing more from your system than it’s meant to.
Self-hosted applications rely on specific “dependencies,” like databases, programming languages, system tools, etc. That’s why most of them recommend installing through Docker, so that the dependencies installed for one application don’t break the dependencies of another application or service. Docker apps are completely isolated from each other so that they don’t pull from the same resources or interrupt one another during runtime.
You don’t need to learn everything about Docker just to self-host an app, but knowing some basics helps. Put simply, Docker Engine is the core platform that isolates your applications; images are the project libraries used to install an app or service, Docker Hub is a public library of images for apps you can run using Docker, and Docker Compose is an add-on that lets you launch multiple Docker containers at the same time for apps that are more complex.
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Elaborating on that last point, most applications aren’t simple enough to run from a single container. They usually have a frontend component, a backend for administrators, as well as databases they use to store and retrieve information.
Instead of having to launch each Docker container separately by typing docker run into your Linux terminal or SSH every time you need to rerun the app, you can create a compose.yaml file to specify which containers and services need to run together. This is what Docker Compose helps you do.
Once you create a compose.yaml file, Docker Compose can help you run the entire application using a single command:
You can also use docker compose stop to pause your application temporarily and docker compose down to fully stop and clear the containers to prepare for another deployment.
Now that you know the basics, let’s walk through the exact process of self-hosting a containerized application with Docker Engine and Docker Compose.
