Containers can be thought of as lightweight, stand-alone, and executable software packages that include everything needed to run a piece of software, including the code, runtime, libraries, environment variables, and config files. Containers isolate software from its surroundings, ensuring that it works uniformly across different environments.
## Why Use Containers?
- **Portability**: Containers ensure that applications work consistently across different platforms, be it a developer's laptop or a production server. This eliminates the "it works on my machine" problem.
- **Efficiency**: Containers are lightweight since they use shared resources without the overhead of a full-fledged operating system. This enables faster startup times and reduces resource usage.
- **Scalability**: Containers can be effortlessly scaled up or down according to the workload, making it ideal for distributed applications and microservices.
- **Consistency**: Containers enable developers, QA, and operations teams to have a consistent environment throughout the application lifecycle, leading to faster and smoother deployment pipelines.
- **Security**: Containers provide a level of isolation from other containers and the underlying host system, which aids in maintaining application security.
## Working with Containers using Docker CLI
Docker CLI offers several commands to help you create, manage, and interact with containers. Some common commands include:
-`docker run`: Used to create and start a new container.
