Introduction

Wanna run Docker Engine server on your AWS EC2 instance? This instruction will show you how. If you require additional details, please refer to below references. Everything in this document is a summary of the references. This guide assumes following:

Your local is on Windows 11
Your remote is AWS EC2 instance running on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (t2.micro)
- Auto-Assign IPV4 address
- Subnet has access to internet (IGW)

References

Prereqs

Install Docker Desktop (do not need it running in your taskbar), you just need the Docker CLI available
Install Putty (including PuttyGen)

Standup EC2 Instance

t2.micro (this is sufficient for example)
Auto-Assign Public IP
8GB gp2 EBS is sufficient
Attach Security Group, allow all TCP from your local machine
Generate a new key pair or use existing one
Convert the download PEM into PPK using PuttyGen, you’ll need this to Putty into your EC2 instance
When you log into EC2, the username you’ll use is ubuntu

Configure your EC2 Instance

Update the server
```
sudo apt-get update
```

Install necessary dependencies for Docker Repository

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release

Trust Docker Key

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

Setup Docker Repository

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Update again for good measure?
```
sudo apt-get update
```

Install Docker Engine

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Check installation
```
sudo docker run hello-world
```
Expected output:
```
Hello from Docker!
```
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

Configure Docker Engine

Add yourself to docker group
```
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
```
I found that docker group already existed, so I did not had to create it. I just added ubuntu user to it.

Set service to start on boot

sudo systemctl enable docker.service
sudo systemctl enable containerd.service

Update systemd to listen on this port from localhost

sudo systemctl edit docker.service

Enter following:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// -H tcp://127.0.0.1:2375

Restart services

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart docker.service

Verify

sudo netstat -lntp | grep dockerd

You should see something like this

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2375          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8507/dockerd

Configure your local

Configure Putty
- Under Session Tab
  - enter ubuntu@111.111.111.111 with port 22
  - Select Never Close Window on Exist
- Under SSH:
  - Protocol options
    - Don’t start a shell or command at all
- Auth Tab
  - Enter your private key (PPK)
- Tunnels Tab
  - Source port: this is 2375
  - Destination port: this should be localhost:4444 <– pick whatever port you want to use
- Go back to Session Tab
  - Give it a save session name and click save
- Click Open

Create remote Context

Create context

docker context create my-engine --docker host="tcp://127.0.0.1:4444" --description "remote"

Select that context
```
docker context use my-engine
```

Deploy using the engine
- Deploy a new httpd container in the remote host
```
docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8888:80/tcp httpd:latest
```
Verify the new container is running
- Log back into your EC2 instance, run container list
```
docker container list
```
  You should see the new httpd that you just deployed.
- Is the website working
```
curl localhost:8888
```
  You should get back an HTML like this,
```
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>
```