Show running containers
docker ps
Show all containers
docker ps -a
Docker start container
docker start xxx
Docker stop container
docker stop xxx
Docker restart container
docker restart xxx
Docker remove container
docker rm xxx
Show images
docker images
Remove images
docker rmi xxx
List volumes
docker volume ls
Remove volume
docker volume rm xxx
Remove unused (dangling) volumes
docker volume ls -qf dangling=true | xargs -r docker volume rm
This config will describe a procedure of how to back up a Docker container as well as it will also show how to recover a Docker container from backup.
To understand the Docker container backup and recovery process we first need to understand the difference between docker image and docker container. A docker image contains an operating system with possibly one or more prefigured applications. Whereas, a docker container is a running instance created from an image.
When we need make a backup of a docker container we commit its current state and save it as a docker image.
# docker ps CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 78727078a04b debian:8 "/bin/bash" 13 seconds ago Up 11 seconds container1
From the above output we see a running docker container named container1 with an ID 78727078a04b. We now use commit command to take a snapshot of its current running state:
# docker commit -p 78727078a04b container1 e09f9ac65c8b3095927c14ca0594868f73831bde0800ce66415afeb91aea93cf
With do above command we have first paused a running container with -p option, made a commit to save the entire snapshot as a docker image with a name container1:
# docker images REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED VIRTUAL SIZE container1 latest e09f9ac65c8b 39 seconds ago 125.1 MB
Now we have a container backup saved as an image waiting to be redeployed again. If we wish to redeploy our container1 image on another docker host system we may push the image to some private docker repository:
# docker login # docker push container1
or we can save it as a tar file and move it freely to any desired docker host system for a deployment:
# docker save -o ~/container1.tar container1 [root@localhost lubos]# ls -l ~/container1.tar -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 131017216 Jun 14 20:31 /root/container1.tar
The above paragraphs explained how to backup a docker container. In this section we will discuss how recover from a docker backup.
In case that we have pushed our backed up docker container image to a private repository we can simply use docker run command to start a new instance from the container1 image. If we have transferred our container1.tar backup file to another docker host system we first need to load backed up tar file into a docker’s local image repository:
# docker load -i /root/container1.tar
Confirm that the image was loaded with:
# docker images
Now we can use docker run command to start a new instance from the above loaded container1 image.