Releasing a complex Docker stack isn’t almost as challenging as you believe, at least when Portainer is your GUI of option. Learn how easy this is with Portainer templates.
Image: BalanceFormCreative/Adobe Stock When you think about deploying a full-stack, containerized application, you probably anticipate it to be a tedious and complex task of manually composing a manifest and hoping it releases properly. Although designers who are skilled in YAML and Docker manifests would say it’s not a tough thing to do, if you’re even remotely brand-new to containers, the procedure can be pretty challenging.
SEE: Hiring kit: Python designer (TechRepublic Premium)
Must-read designer protection
Luckily, there are apps like Portainer that head out of their way to make handling and releasing containers tremendously easier than doing so from the command line. With Portainer, you can manage Docker containers, stacks, images, networks, volumes and more, but one of the most impressive features is its capability to release a full-stack application from a simple app design template.
You’ll discover design templates for stacks like computer system registries, NodeJS, NGINX, Apache, Caddy, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, SQL Server, Redis, Joomla, Drupal, Plane, Jenkins, Redmine, WordPress and others.
Let me show you how it’s done.
Jump to:
What you’ll require to release a full-stack application
The only thing you’ll need to follow along in this tutorial is a running circumstances of Portainer. I recommend releasing Portainer to a MicroK8s environment and then setting up Docker CE on the controller so you include a Docker environment into the mix.
How to release a full-stack app from a Portainer template
Start by logging into your Portainer instance and choosing the Docker environment from the Environments listing (Figure A).
Figure A
The two basic environments that are available to Portainer. As soon as the Docker environment is loaded, click App Templates in the left sidebar (Figure B).
Figure B
Our Docker environment navigation. A listing of the available application templates will appear. Let’s test out the WordPress release. Scroll down till you see WordPress (Figure C).
Figure C
The WordPress full-stack application design template listing. From here, there are two methods to go. Initially, you can click the WordPress entry and deploy the full stack as is. Additionally, you can click Copy As Custom, which will open the template up for editing (Figure D).
Figure D
Opening the WordPress design template as a custom release that you can then modify. Using the Customized option enables you to modify the YAML files in the Portainer Web Edibot so you can customize the release.
If you merely want to get WordPress deployed quickly, simply click the entry in the Templates listing and, in the resulting window (Figure E), provide the implementation a name, type wordpress as the database root user password and click Deploy The Stack. If you wish to change the password for increased security, you’ll want to go the custom route. For testing purposes, the simpler method works fine.
Figure E
Deploying the WordPress stack
using the built-in design template. It will take a while for the release to finish, once it’s finished, you will be reclaimed to the Stacks listing. Click on the recently deployed WordPress stack, and you’ll see the published port listed (Figure F).
Figure F
Our WordPress stack has been deployed. Offer the containers lots of time to spin up and then point your browser to http://SERVER:PORT, where SERVER is the IP address of the controller node and port is the released port you saw when you saw the newly-deployed stack. You will be greeted by the WordPress installer (Figure G), where you can point and click your way to completing the release.
Figure G
The WordPress installer wizard.
Complete stacks made basic
You will not find an easier method to find out the art of releasing a full-stack application with Docker. Using Portainer considerably streamlines the release and management of containers. When full-stack designers start using Portainer, they’ll wonder how they ever managed without it.
Read next: The 12 best IDEs for programs (TechRepublic)
