We'll use lots of observability tools in the course and they each have their own dependencies and configuration. To simplify we'll use Docker containers to run all the components, so you don't need to install a ton of software.
You don't need any Docker experience for this course, everything will be scripted out for you.
We'll also use Git for source control, so you'll need a client on your machine to talk to GitHub.
Git is a free, open source tool for source control:
If you're on macOS or Windows 10, Docker Desktop is for you:
The download and install takes a few minutes. When it's done, run the Docker app and you'll see the Docker whale logo in your taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (macOS).
On Windows 10 the install may need a restart before you get here.
If you're using WSL on Windows 10, it's much easier to use Docker Desktop which integrates with your WSL distro.
Docker Engine is the background service which runs containers. You can install it - along with the Docker command line - for lots of different Linux distros:
On a new install of Docker, make sure the service is running and add yourself to the docker group so you don't need to use sudo for the Docker CLI:
sudo service docker start # you'll be prompted for your password
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker
OPTIONAL - you can set Docker to automatically start when your machine starts (using systemd):
sudo systemctl enable docker.service
sudo systemctl enable containerd.service
When you have Git and Docker installed you should be able to run these commands and get some output:
git --version
I'm using Git for Windows and my output is:
git version 2.31.1.windows.1
Then run:
docker version
I'm using Docker Desktop on Windows and mine says:
Client:
Cloud integration: 1.0.14
Version: 20.10.6
API version: 1.41
Go version: go1.16.3
Git commit: 370c289
Built: Fri Apr 9 22:49:36 2021
OS/Arch: windows/amd64
Context: default
Experimental: true
Server: Docker Engine - Community
Engine:
Version: 20.10.6
API version: 1.41 (minimum version 1.12)
Go version: go1.13.15
Git commit: 8728dd2
Built: Fri Apr 9 22:44:56 2021
OS/Arch: linux/amd64
...
Make sure you see two sets of results:
Client:andServer:
Add your user to the docker group:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
# logout and log back in again
# OR run:
su $USER
And then:
docker-compose version
My output is:
docker-compose version 1.29.1, build c34c88b2
docker-py version: 5.0.0
CPython version: 3.9.0
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1g 21 Apr 2020
Your details and version numbers may be different - that's fine. If you get errors then we need to look into it, because you'll need to have Docker running for all of the exercises.
❗ If you're running Docker Desktop on Windows, make sure you're in Linux container mode. This is the default mode, but if you've changed to using Windows containers (from the whale toolbar menu), then you'll need to switch back.