If you’re like most people, you probably use a computer to do things like work, play games, and surf the web. But what if you want to run a program on your computer that doesn’t have an operating system? You can do that by running a program in a container. Containers are virtual machines that run isolated from the rest of your computer. To run a container on your computer, you first need to create it. To do this, open up a command prompt and type the following: docker create –name mycontainer1 mycontainer1 This will create a new container named mycontainer1. The next step is to assign a static IP address to the container. To do this, open up the Network and Sharing Center and click on the connection icon in the lower-left corner of the window. In the window that pops up, click on Change adapter settings. In the window that opens next, click on Local Area Connection (LAN) and then click on Properties. In the Properties window that opens next, under Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), click on Use The Following IP Address And Subnet Mask: The IP address that appears in this box will be used as your container’s static IP address. To make sure it’s set correctly, type it into your command prompt and hit enter: docker ps -a | grep mycontainer1 ..
Static IP addresses don’t change when containers or services are stopped and started, making them useful for permanent networking. Assigning Docker containers static IP addresses is an easy way to make them more accessible.
Why Use a Static IP?
There are two kinds of “static IP”; private IP addresses used for internal networking inside a server, and public IP addresses used to connect outside the server, often over the internet.
If you need to set up a public IP address for a container, you’ll want to use port bindings. You can “publish” ports on the Docker container to be accessible from the host. While there are more advanced networking setups, this is by far the easiest and most common. For example, binding port 80 (HTTP) on the host to point to an NGINX container:
If you want to make a static private IP address, you should consider if you need to use one at all. Most of the time, you’ll want a static IP to talk to one container from another, or from the host. In most cases, Docker’s built in networking can handle this.
Docker comes with a default network, but if you make your own, you can give containers aliases when launched in that network. This alias will resolve to the container’s private IP automatically. For example, the NGINX container here can access the MongoDB instance with the connection string mongodb://mongohost:27017.
To learn more, you can read Docker’s documentation on user-defined bridge networks.
However, there are still plenty of times when you’ll want to manually specify a private IP address, such as accessing containers directly from the host. You’ll still need to use a custom Docker network to do so, but it’s easy to set up.
Setting Up Static IPs
First, you’ll need to set up a Docker network, and since we care about the IP address, you’ll need to specify a fixed subnet:
RELATED: What are Subnets, and How Do They Affect My Network?
Then, you can run a container, specifying the network with the –net flag, and specifying the IP with the -ip flag:
You caan verify the address is correct by checking it in container with exec -t bin/bash, or by inspecting the Docker container list:
Using Docker Compose
Docker Compose is a tool used to launch multiple containers with predefined settings. This includes setting up networks with specific subnets, and you can attach containers to networks with fixed IPs using the ipv4_address config block shown here:
