🐙 Production Orchestration with Docker Compose
NOTE
Docker Compose is the standard tool for defining and running multi-container applications. In modern environments,
compose.yamlspecifies not just images, but network topologies, persistent storage, health probes, and resource governance for an entire stack.
🏗️ 1. Tiered Network Isolation Architecture
graph TD User["🌐 Public Client / Internet"] -->|Port 443 / 80| Proxy["🛡️ Reverse Proxy (Nginx / Caddy)"] subgraph "Public Frontend Network (frontend-net)" Proxy App["🚀 Backend API (Node.js)"] end subgraph "Isolated Private Backend Network (backend-net)" App DB[("🗄️ PostgreSQL Database")] Redis[("⚡ Redis Cache")] end Proxy -->|HTTP| App App -->|TCP 5432| DB App -->|TCP 6379| Redis
💻 2. Production compose.yaml Specification
version: "3.8"
networks:
frontend-net:
driver: bridge
backend-net:
driver: bridge
internal: true # Disables external outbound routing
volumes:
postgres_data:
driver: local
redis_data:
driver: local
services:
# ========================================================
# Reverse Proxy & SSL Termination
# ========================================================
gateway:
image: nginx:alpine
restart: always
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
volumes:
- ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro
networks:
- frontend-net
depends_on:
api:
condition: service_healthy
# ========================================================
# Core Backend API
# ========================================================
api:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: Dockerfile
restart: always
environment:
NODE_ENV: production
DATABASE_URL: postgresql://${POSTGRES_USER}:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@postgres:5432/${POSTGRES_DB}
REDIS_URL: redis://redis:6379
networks:
- frontend-net
- backend-net
deploy:
resources:
limits:
cpus: "2.0"
memory: 1024M
reservations:
cpus: "0.5"
memory: 256M
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO-", "http://localhost:3000/health"]
interval: 15s
timeout: 5s
retries: 3
start_period: 10s
depends_on:
postgres:
condition: service_healthy
redis:
condition: service_healthy
# ========================================================
# Relational Database
# ========================================================
postgres:
image: postgres:16-alpine
restart: always
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: app_db
POSTGRES_USER: ${POSTGRES_USER}
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
networks:
- backend-net
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U ${POSTGRES_USER} -d app_db"]
interval: 10s
timeout: 5s
retries: 5
# ========================================================
# Caching & Sessions
# ========================================================
redis:
image: redis:7-alpine
restart: always
command: redis-server --appendonly yes --requirepass ${REDIS_PASSWORD}
volumes:
- redis_data:/data
networks:
- backend-net
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
interval: 10s
timeout: 3s
retries: 3⚡ 3. Essential Management Commands
# Start stack in background with image build
docker compose up -d --build
# Follow logs for specific service
docker compose logs -f api
# Monitor real-time memory and CPU utilization
docker compose stats
# Stop stack gracefully
docker compose stop
# Teardown stack preserving data volumes
docker compose down📚 Official Documentation & References
- 🌐 Docker Engine Official Documentation — Official architecture, CLI, and storage drivers.
- 📦 Open Container Initiative (OCI) Runtime Spec — Technical spec for runc and containerd.
- 🐙 Docker Compose Specification — Official compose.yaml standard.
- 🐧 Linux Kernel: Cgroups v2 & Namespaces — Official kernel documentation.