Book excerpt: Learn the key differences between containers and virtual machines. Adopting a project based approach, this book introduces you to a simple Python application to be developed and containerized with Docker. After an introduction to Containers and Docker you'll be guided through Docker installation and configuration. You'll also learn basic functions and commands used in Docker by running a simple container using Docker commands. The book then moves on to developing a Python based Messaging Bot using required libraries and virtual environment where you'll add Docker Volumes to your project, ensuring your container data is safe. You'll create a database container and link your project to it and finally, bring up the Bot-associated database all at once with Docker Compose. What You'll Learn Build, run, and distribute Docker containers Develop a Python App and containerize it Use Dockerfile to run the Python App Define and run multi-container applications with Docker Compose Work with persisting data generated by and used by Docker containers Who This Book Is For Intermediate developers/DevOps practitioners who are looking to improve their build and release workflow by containerizing applications