Docker– Getting Started

If you have not heard of this thing called docker or more generically containerization, then

1. What rock have you been under?
2. Here is a quick guide to start off with.

Even though docker is a Linux concept, Microsoft has embraced it and started building the ability to run either Windows or Linux containers in your Windows environment. The catch is, if you want to start playing on your desktop with windows containers, you will need “64bit Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education (1511 November update, Build 10586 or later)” and have Hyper-V and the Container feature enabled.
Once you have that sorted you can start by installing the following:

• Docker for Windows
  I recommend using the beta channel as this has the support for Windows containers using Hyper-V.
• Kitematic, you can get it directly from here
• dotnetCore SDK, ‘cause that is how we roll…
• A cool IDE like VS Code
  If you are using VS Code then don't forget to add the Docker extension
• And assuming you have a new, non-developer machine do not forget node. We will use it to restore packages when we start playing with demo samples.

Install docker for Windows. Once you have that installed, you will notice the docker icon in your system tray. Right click on that and select “Open Kitematic”. This will tell you where to download and ultimately put Kitematic. This is strictly not necessary, and we can do everything we need without it, but it is a “nice to have”

This should get you ready to start playing.
A note: if you have Visual Studio (2015.3 or newer) installed, then I can recommend you install the dotnetcore tools preview.
In the next post we will create a simple application that we can start doing stuff with.