Preview
Docker is one of the most important tools for building, shipping, and running reliable applications. I created this course for developers, system administrators, and IT professionals who want to learn it through real commands, configurations, and exercises rather than promises or abstract theory.
The course contains 27 progressive lessons. It starts with the history and foundations of containers, then moves through images, networking, persistence, local development, and the internals that matter when preparing applications for production.
A practical, progressive path
The first lessons establish a consistent training environment and get you running containers in the foreground and background. From there, you learn how to restart containers, attach to active sessions, inspect what is running, and debug from inside a container.
A central part of the course is about building and managing Docker images. It covers interactive image creation as well as Dockerfiles, including ENTRYPOINT, CMD, COPY, and ADD. The goal is not merely to build images, but to understand their layers and reduce their size through a more deliberate build process.
Each module builds on the previous one, so the transition from a first docker run command to a multi-container development stack remains practical and understandable.
The complete curriculum
The course is organised into six modules. The lesson titles below follow the official course sequence.
Module 1 Introduction & Training Setup
- History of Docker and containers
- Our training environment
Module 2 Container Basics & Operations
- Run our first container
- Run containers in background
- Restarting and attaching to containers
Module 3 Understanding & Building Images
- Understanding Docker images
- Building images interactively
- Building images with a Dockerfile
- Entrypoint and command
- Copying files during the build
- Reduce images size
Module 4 Registry, Networking & Troubleshooting
- Images registry
- Naming, labeling, and inspecting
- Getting inside a Container
- Understanding Docker networks
- Container network drivers
- Service discovery with containers
Module 5 Volumes & Local Workflows
- Working with volumes
- Local development workflow
- Compose for development stack
Module 6 Advanced Optimization & Internals
- Advanced Dockerfile syntax
- Application configuration
- Limiting resources
- Logging and monitoring
- Multi-architecture builds
- Common Docker settings
- Container internals
For lesson details and course materials, visit Zavy’s Academy.
From local development to production
Docker is most useful when the same concepts can travel from a developer’s machine into a reliable runtime environment. The course therefore covers registries, tagging, publishing, container inspection, and troubleshooting alongside bridge and host networking, network drivers, service discovery, and Docker’s built-in DNS resolution.
It also explores data persistence through volumes, bind mounts, and anonymous volumes. These tools make it possible to keep data when containers are removed or recreated, and they provide the foundation for repeatable local development environments.
Docker Compose brings those pieces together into multi-container stacks. The final module then focuses on advanced Dockerfile syntax, application configuration, CPU and memory limits, logging, monitoring, multi-architecture builds, Docker Engine settings, namespaces, control groups, and storage drivers. It is designed to show both how to use Docker and what happens underneath the hood.
Free and open-source learning
The video lessons are available for free, with documentation in both English and Italian and an open-source repository for the examples. The material is intended to be accessible without a paywall: the focus is on clear engineering principles and an environment where you can run the examples yourself.
Whether you are learning containers for the first time or strengthening the production side of your Docker knowledge, the course gives you a structured path from foundational concepts to practical workflows.
Conclusion
I built this course to make Docker approachable without oversimplifying it: start with the fundamentals, practise each concept in a real environment, and gradually learn the production concerns that affect containerised applications.