Containerization

getting started with containerd

Bil Al

• 1 min read

containerd is a container runtime that is designed to be lightweight and modular. It is used to manage the entire lifecycle of containers, from image management to container execution and networking. containerd is used as the default runtime in many popular container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, and it can also be used as a standalone runtime.

Here's a basic overview of how to get started with containerd:

  1. Install containerd: The first step is to install containerd on your host machine. You can download a pre-built binary from the containerd releases page, or you can build containerd from source. Once you have the binary, you can install it by following the instructions in the containerd documentation.
  2. Configure containerd: After you have containerd installed, you'll need to configure it to run on your host machine. This typically involves creating a config.toml file, which contains settings such as the location of the containerd state directory and the address and port that the containerd daemon should listen on.
  3. Start containerd: Once containerd is configured, you can start it by running the containerd daemon. On Linux and macOS, this is typically done by running the "containerd" command as root. On Windows, you can start containerd as a service.
  4. Verify containerd is running: you can check if the containerd is running by running containerd command "containerd -version" , it should return the version of containerd that you have installed
  5. Create and run a container: you can use the containerd command-line interface to create and run a container, the CLI is exposed through the "ctr" command. Some of the most common commands include "ctr images" to list existing images and "ctr containers" to list existing containers.
  6. Manage and inspect Containers: you can use the "ctr" command to manage and inspect containers, such as "ctr create" to create a new container, "ctr start" to start an existing container and "ctr inspect" to display the information about the container

containerd is a powerful tool that can be used to manage containers on a host machine, but it's not the easiest tool to use, it required a good understanding of the underlying concepts of containerization. So, it's not recommended for beginner who just started with containerization. I would recommend you to learn the basics of containerization and then start with containerd to get the most out of it.