The Project
I’ve recently started a project where I’m consolidating my VMs into docker containers. Docker containers are another layer of abstraction for servers and their OS is provided by the host docker server. The applications run inside virtual environments where only the bare minimum required software is running.
In my case, I decided to create a docker VM instead of installing docker on the bare metal. My fileserver is still going to run as its own VM alongside the docker VM, but I’m going to move my Plex server and VPN server to run inside docker.
Why Docker?
Docker allows for rapid application deployment. Although it is not the best place to host a VPN server or a Plex server, it does have some appeal in having portability for those servers. Creating a dockerfile with a strict definition for what you want the server to be allows the server to build with a single command. For my purposes, in my home test environment, this allows me to blow up and rebuild my servers on a whim and makes it a quick process. Sounds like enough of a win to learn a new technology with great applications for the applications I’m going to write later down the road. Haha, see what I did there?
The Blog
In my blog, I intend on documenting my move to Docker as both notes for myself and notes for you, the reader. The upcoming posts will detail the steps to recreate an OpenVPN-AS and a Plex server in a series of Docker containers running on a single Docker host VM. I’ll include everything from setting up the Docker host VM all the way through adding users for the VPN and mapping symlinks for Plex.