Production-Like Environment

What to expect in this chapter?

We are so close to deployment to production. In the previous chapter, we configured our application so it is ready to run in production environments. We also pushed our image to Docker Hub.

However, before setting up cloud-based infrastructure and deploying it, having a practice run locally is a good option. In this chapter, we will discuss virtualization technologies, specifically VirtualBox, to create a virtual infrastructure that can simulate a production environment.

We will learn how to

• create a single node cluster, capable of running Docker containers;
• deploy the application;
• scale up the app and run multiple copies of it on a single instance.

In the process, we will also learn more about the additional tools Docker provides for creating infrastructure and deploying and managing production apps. These skills will translate directly to doing these same things on cloud-based infrastructure.

Note: Since our platform does not support the creation of virtual machines (VMs), we will only be sharing the process of how a production-like environment can work.