DevOps Local Setup: Docker & Dev-Containers in VSCode

As an app developer or a DevOps, Platform, or Cloud Engineer, having a smooth and reliable local setup makes a huge difference in productivity gain. If you’ve ever wondered about improving your workstation setup for devops or cloud projects, this short video tutorial will definitely help you.

Imagine you’re working on a project that requires a few different CLI tools for managing applications & deployment environments and the cloud infrastructure such as AWS and Kubernetes. That’ll require you to set up your local environment with all the necessary tools and CLIs.

There are a couple of ways to go about it. One approach is to individually install all these tools on your machine, whether it’s a Mac, Windows, or Linux. The catch is that your teammates will likely do the same and there is a good chance that it may lead to variations in tool versions and operating systems and that’ll make workstation setups across the team inconsistent.

Alternatively, you can consider using Docker Containers. In this scenario, you create a Docker image containing all the necessary tools and have your entire team adopt the same Docker image. However, it’s easier said than done, as maintaining a uniform container environment setup can become quite challenging.

In this short tutorial, I will walk you through setting up local environment for devs in the DevOps, Platform or Cloud Engineering space.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the steps you’ll learn in the tutorial:

1. Configuring the Dev Containers extension for our project
2. Installing tools such as AWS CLI and CDK using Dev Containers features
3. Installing additional CLI tools such as Terraform and Kubectl by editing Dockerfile
4. Using Docker Volume mount for managing keys such as AWS Auth Credentials
5. Testing AWS CLI from inside the Dev Container
6. Test running Terraform code against AWS S3 from inside the Dev Container

Setting up a reliable local environment can significantly enhance productivity for app developers, DevOps, Platform, and Cloud Engineers. I trust this short video tutorial proves helpful!