30/11/2018 How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry?

- CodeProject

How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry?

techbird, 17 Oct 2018

Step by step guide to set up our own private docker registry

Introduction
Docker provides various services to manage the docker images and those are hub.docker.com, cloud.docker.com, docker trusted
registry and docker registry. Each service was designed with different goals and requirements. Docker hub (hub.docker.com) is the
primary source for the public images. We can set up our own private registry by using the Docker Registry, it is a free and open
source tool to manage docker images. In this article, we are going to see how to set up our own private Docker registry. To follow
this article, you should have basic knowledge about Docker container and related concepts.

To set up the private registry, we have two options, the first one is a standalone setup (it is available through package installer for
Linux operating systems) and the second one is docker registry image (registry on docker hub). Here, we are going to see how to
set up the private registry with docker registry image.

For this article, I am using the docker for windows, however, I am also providing the equivalent commands for Linux OS as well.
The docker registry image was built on alpine Linux so I am using the Linux container in windows docker. I plan to cover more
topics related to private registry setup with a series of articles and this is the first article of the series. The following list shows the
article wise topics coverage:

Part 1: How to set up your private Docker registry?

Private Docker Registry Setup

Storage Customization

Part 2: How to secure your private Docker registry?

CA Certificate
Self-Signed Certificate
Basic Authentication

Part 3: How to run your private registry as a service?

Configuring the Swarm

Generate Secrets
Run the Registry as a Service

Private Docker Registry Setup

Follow the steps below to create your private Docker registry:

Open a PowerShell console (terminal in Linux).

First, I want you to create a folder to share with the container and it will be used in the upcoming steps.
Navigate to C:\ drive and create a folder with the name of localhub (md localhub). For Linux, create the same folder
under /home.
Navigate to C:\localhub folder in windows or /home/localhub in Linux and create a subfolder with the name of "registry".
Type the following command to pull the registry image from the docker hub:

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-Private-Docker-Registry?display=Print 1/5
30/11/2018 How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry? - CodeProject

Windows/Linux:
docker pull registry

Before going to the docker registry set up, I want to set up a meaningful local domain name for your private registry instead
of using localhost but this step is completely optional. I prefer to have the local domain as hub.docker.local. To
configure the local domain in windows and Linux, do the following steps:

Windows

Open an elevated Notepad in docker host.

Open the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file in the Notepad and add this hub.docker.local
127.0.0.1 as an entry in it.
Save and close the file.

Linux

Open a terminal in docker host and type nano /etc/hosts or vi /etc/hosts

Add this hub.docker.local 127.0.0.1 as an entry in it.
Save and close the file.

Spin up a container with the docker registry image:

Windows:
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 -v C:/localhub/registry:/var/lib/registry
--restart=always --name hub.local registry
Linux:
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 -v /home/localhub/registry:/var/lib/registry
--restart=always --name hub.local registry

Docker registry uses the 5000 port as default. --restart=always flag is enable the auto start after the docker
restarted. -v will bind the given host folder with container file system.

Docker might ask you for the user name and password to share the localhub folder with container if you have
not setup the share folder already in docker.

Ensure the registry container is up and running:

Windows/Linux:
docker ps or docker container ls

The next step is to prepare the docker image and push to our private registry. You can use any one of the existing images to
quickly understand the concepts of the Docker Registry. Alpine is one of the lite weight Linux distribution(~2MB) so you can
use this image for a quick assessment:

Windows/Linux:
docker pull alpine

Create a tag to alpine Linux with hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine.

Windows/Linux:
docker tag alpine hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-Private-Docker-Registry?display=Print 2/5
30/11/2018 How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry? - CodeProject
It creates an additional tag on an existing alpine image. Tag format will be like registry hostname: port/new
name. Docker will extract the location from the given tag while pushing to your private registry
Push the my-alpine image to your private registry:

Windows/Linux:
docker push hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine

Remove the alpine and its tagged version to ensure docker is pulling the image from your private registry instead of docker
hub:

Windows/Linux:
docker rmi hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine
docker rmi alpine

Now, pull the my-alpine image from your private registry.

Windows/Linux:
docker pull hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine

Spin up a container with newly downloaded image and ask the container to list out its root directory.

Windows/Linux:
docker run hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine ls

You can check registry catalog on this http://hub.docker.local:5000/v2/_catalog address.

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-Private-Docker-Registry?display=Print 3/5
30/11/2018 How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry? - CodeProject

You can inspect the localhub/registry folder to understand how docker images are stored in the docker registry.

Well done! You have successfully created your own private Docker registry.
(Optional)Stop and remove the registry container and image to move on to the next articles.

Windows/Linux:
docker container stop hub.local
docker container rm hub.local

(Optional)Finally, remove the my-alpine image as well.

Windows/Linux:
docker ps -a
docker container rm container_id
docker rmi hub.docker.local:5000/my-alpine

Storage Customization
Docker registry stores the images on the host file system(/var/lib/registry). Storing images on the file system is not a reliable
solution for a production environment. You can use SSD and SAN for storing your private registry images. First, you have to mount
these drives into your host, then you can easily bind to the container through volume binding. For example, you have mounted an
SSD or SAN into R: drive in windows then you can mount these drives into the container through -v

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-Private-Docker-Registry?display=Print 4/5
30/11/2018 How to Setup Our Own Private Docker Registry? - CodeProject
R:/registry:/var/lib/registry. For Linux, the volume binding will be like this -v
/mnt/registry:/var/lib/registry.
Docker registry also supports to use storage driver compliant storage back-ends so you can use some third party storage back-
ends like Amazon S3 bucket, Google Cloud Platform, etc.

Thanks for reading this article and I hope you find something useful. Please share your comments below. In the next article, I have
written about "how to secure your private registry?".

License
This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

techbird
No Biography provided
Architect FE
India

Comments and Discussions

0 messages have been posted for this article Visit https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-
Private-Docker-Registry to post and view comments on this article, or click here to get a print view with messages.

Permalink | Advertise | Privacy | Cookies | Terms of Use | Mobile Article Copyright 2018 by techbird
Web05 | 2.8.181129.1 | Last Updated 17 Oct 2018 Everything else Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2018

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1263817/How-to-Setup-Our-Own-Private-Docker-Registry?display=Print 5/5