As per the 2020 survey by top organizations, 44% of developers are now using some form of continuous integration and deployment with Docker Containers. Lots of developers have already got this setup by using Docker Hub as their container registry for part of their workflow so that we can decide to dig out the best practices for doing this and provide some guidance of how to get started.
One of the important things while working with Docker is how CI/CD is working out and when you need to test with the CI or when you could be able to do this locally. At Docker, we think about how developers work in terms their inner loop (code, build, run, test) and their outer loop (push change, CI test, CI build, deployment). So, it is always suggested that with the proper Docker online training course from a repute organization will always let you know about the in-depth knowledge on Docker so that you can be expert enough to work in a professional way.
So, before going to think about optimizing CI/CD, it is important to think about the inner loop and how it could be related to the outer loop (the CI). Most of the people are not willing to take the debugging via the CI, so it is always better if your inner loop and the outer loop will be as similar as possible. At this time, it is good to run unit tests as per of the Docker build command by adding a target for them in your Docker file. As you are doing some changes and again re-building locally, you can then run the same unit tests so that it could be run in the CI on your local machine by using a very simple command.
Once you get into your actual outer loop as well as into Docker Hub, there are few things which everyone can o to get the most of your CI and deliver the fastest Docker experience.
1. The first thing is that you need to stay secure. While setting up the CI, make sure that you are using a Docker Hub access token rather than any kind of password so that you can create new access token from your security page on Docker Hub.
2. Once you have this and you have added it to the secrets store on the platform you may have to look at when you decide to push and pull in the CI/CD along with where from depending on the change you are trying to make. The first thing is to reduce the build time and also the number of calls that is made use of the build cache to reuse layers which you have already pulled. It can be done on many platforms with the help of the buildX (buildkits) caching functionality and whatever cache your platform provides.
3. The other changes that a Docker developer wants to make in only have your release images that will go to Docker Hub. It can be included setting up functions to push your PR images to a more local image store to be quickly pulled and tested rather than promoting them all the way to production.
4. There are lots of tricks for using Docker on CI but the above are the top things that you can do around the recent Hub rate changes.
So, to implement a CI/CD pipeline in the codebase using the config file in the project, you need the followings:
- A Docker Hub Content
- Set the project environment variables which will specify your Docker Hub username and password in the dashboard.
- SSH Access to a Cloud Server. You can add the SSH key to your account through the portal. A digital Ocean server is also very good in that scenario.
- You have to create a deployment script on the host server that will be used to deploy the application.
Once your project is set up in the platform, any commits pushed upstream will be detected and executed the job defined in the config.yml file. The config.yml is that configuration file where all of the CI/CD magic happens. You have to create a new directory in the repo’s root and a yml file within the new directory. The new assets must follow the naming schema – directory: ./ file:config.yml in the git repository of the project.
So, do proper research and learn Docker, DevOps course in Hyderabad to make your career bright for the future along with the CI/CD pipeline.
