Portainer stands as a versatile and user-friendly management solution tailored specifically for Docker environments. It serves as a lightweight yet powerful tool, offering an intuitive graphical interface that simplifies the complexities of container deployment, monitoring, and management tasks. With Portainer, users gain unprecedented visibility and control over their Docker resources, enabling them to effortlessly visualize and administer containers, networks, volumes, and images. Its centralized dashboard provides comprehensive insights and actionable data, empowering users to optimize resource allocation, troubleshoot issues, and streamline their Docker workflows with unparalleled ease and efficiency. Whether you’re a novice exploring Docker for the first time or a seasoned professional managing intricate containerized applications, Portainer’s seamless interface and robust feature set make it an indispensable companion for orchestrating Docker environments with confidence and clarity.
It will take a few minutes for your VM to be deployed. When the deployment is finished, move on to the next section.
Connect to virtual machine
Create an SSH connection with the VM.
bashCopy
ssh azureuser@10.111.12.123
Usage/Deployment Instructions
Step 1: Access the Portainer in Azure Marketplace and click on Get it now button.
Click on Continue and then click on Create.
Step 2: Now to create a virtual machine, enter or select appropriate values for zone, machine type, resource group and so on as per your choice.
Click on Review + create.
Step 3: The below window confirms that VM was deployed.
Step 4: Open port 9000 in security group by going to resource group –
Step 5: Open putty and connect with your machine. Add IP address of the running virtual machine.
Step 6: Login with user name and password that you provided during machine creation.
How to access Portainer web interface
To access Portainer’s web interface, launch your web browser and browse this URL
http://server-ip:9000
NOTE: Sometimes, you can run into the error showing that the container has timed out for security purposes, as shown below.
As a workaround, restart the container using the docker stop and docker start commands as shown below.
docker stop contaner_ID
docker start contaner_ID
When you browse the URL, you will be required to create an administrative user. Therefore, provide a username and a strong password and click Create User.
Once you’ve created an admin user, you will be guided to the Quick Setup page. Since only one Portainer environment is currently sitting on your local environment, select the Get Started option.
Next, click the Live connect button.
You will be directed to your environment’s dashboard. On the left navigation bar, click Containers to start creating a container.
Next, click the add container button to the far left to create containers. You can already see that the Portainer image is listed as running on the container list.
On the Create Container page, specify the container details such as the container name, registry (by default, this is set to Docker Hub), and image. If you are unsure about the image name, click the Search button, which will take you to Docker Hub, where you can verify the correct image name.
Finally, click the Deploy the Container button.
A few moments later, the running container will appear on the container list, as shown below. In this example, we have deployed a Redis container.
You can confirm the running container on the command line by running docker ps once more. The output below shows an additional container running with the tag redis:latest. This confirms that our Redis container is running as expected.
From the Portainer dashboard, you can perform a host of other operations, such as starting, stopping, restarting, and pausing containers.
Until now, small developers did not have the capital to acquire massive compute resources and ensure they had the capacity they needed to handle unexpected spikes in load. Amazon EC2 enables any developer to leverage Amazon’s own benefits of massive scale with no up-front investment or performance compromises. Developers are now free to innovate knowing that no matter how successful their businesses become, it will be inexpensive and simple to ensure they have the compute capacity they need to meet their business requirements.
The “Elastic” nature of the service allows developers to instantly scale to meet spikes in traffic or demand. When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals.
Traditional hosting services generally provide a pre-configured resource for a fixed amount of time and at a predetermined cost. Amazon EC2 differs fundamentally in the flexibility, control and significant cost savings it offers developers, allowing them to treat Amazon EC2 as their own personal data center with the benefit of Amazon.com’s robust infrastructure.
When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals.
Secondly, many hosting services don’t provide full control over the compute resources being provided. Using Amazon EC2, developers can choose not only to initiate or shut down instances at any time, they can completely customize the configuration of their instances to suit their needs – and change it at any time. Most hosting services cater more towards groups of users with similar system requirements, and so offer limited ability to change these.
Finally, with Amazon EC2 developers enjoy the benefit of paying only for their actual resource consumption – and at very low rates. Most hosting services require users to pay a fixed, up-front fee irrespective of their actual computing power used, and so users risk overbuying resources to compensate for the inability to quickly scale up resources within a short time frame.
You have complete control over the visibility of your systems. The Amazon EC2 security systems allow you to place your running instances into arbitrary groups of your choice. Using the web services interface, you can then specify which groups may communicate with which other groups, and also which IP subnets on the Internet may talk to which groups. This allows you to control access to your instances in our highly dynamic environment. Of course, you should also secure your instance as you would any other server.