Learning Docker - Second Edition

Linking containers

Before the introduction of the concept of the user-defined network, container linking was predominantly used for inter-container discovery and communication. That is, cooperating containers can be linked together to offer complex and business-aware services. The linked containers have a kind of source-recipient relationship, wherein the source container gets linked to the recipient container, and the recipient securely receives a variety of information from the source container. However, the source container will know nothing about the recipients to which it is linked. Another noteworthy feature of linking containers in a secured setup is that the linked containers can communicate using secure tunnels without exposing the ...