Docker Containerisation
Packaging your application, its runtime and its dependencies into a Docker image so it behaves the same way wherever it runs, ending the gap between what a developer's laptop shows and what production does.
What Docker Solves
An application, its language runtime, its libraries and its settings get packaged into one image. That image runs the same way on a developer's laptop, on a staging server and in production, so a version difference between those three places stops being the reason something breaks live.
What We Package
Application and Runtime
Your code together with the exact language and runtime version it needs, fixed inside the image.
Dependencies and Libraries
Every package your application relies on, installed at a known version rather than whatever happens to be on a server.
Configuration via Environment Variables
Settings that differ between environments are supplied at run time, so the same image serves development, staging and production.
Multi-Service Setups With Docker Compose
Applications made of several services — a web app, a queue worker, a cache — described together so they start up correctly as a set.
Building Images the Right Way
Small, Layered Images
Images built to be as small as the application allows, so they build, transfer and start quickly.
A Private Registry for Your Images
Built images are stored in a registry under your account, not left only on the machine that built them.
Image Versioning and Tagging
Every image is tagged to a specific build, so you can always identify and roll back to an exact version.
Rebuilding From a Clean Definition
The image definition lives as a file in your repository, so a new image can always be produced from scratch rather than depending on a machine's history.
Where Docker Does Not Help Yet
An application tightly bound to a specific physical device, a legacy installer that resists automation, or software licensed per physical machine can be harder to containerise usefully. We will say so during the assessment rather than force a container definition onto something that will not benefit from it.
Frequently asked questions
Does our application need code changes to be containerised?
Sometimes. Applications that assume a fixed file path, write to their own install folder, or depend on something installed once on a specific machine usually need small adjustments before they package cleanly.
What drives the cost of containerising an application?
How many separate services make up the application, how many undocumented assumptions the current install has, and how much of the configuration is hard-coded rather than supplied at run time.
What drives how long containerising an application takes?
Mostly the discovery of hidden dependencies — libraries, file paths or installed tools the application quietly relies on that only surface once we try to package it.
Can we keep using our existing servers?
Yes. Containers run on the servers you already have; this does not require moving to a new host, only running a container runtime on the servers in question.
Who owns the images and the registry?
You do. Images are pushed to a registry account in your name, and the Dockerfile and Compose definitions sit in your repository.
What information do we need to supply?
A list of the application's dependencies as best known, and access to a development copy of the application to test the packaged version against.
Does containerising fix a slow or unreliable application?
No. Docker makes an application's environment consistent and portable; it does not change the application's own performance or correctness. Those are addressed as separate work if needed.
Tell us what you need.
Send a short brief and one of our engineers will come back to you — usually the same day.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
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