Building .NET Apps with Docker

Build modern, portable, and production-ready .NET applications with the power of Docker. Building .NET Apps with Docker is a practical, hands-on guide for developers and DevOps engineers who want to harness containerization to streamline development, testing, deployment, and scaling of .NET applications across environments.
Whether you're developing with .NET Core or the latest .NET 7+ versions, Docker enables you to create consistent environments, reduce deployment friction, and scale services seamlessly. This book provides everything you need to know—from setting up your Docker workspace and writing Dockerfiles to deploying multi-container applications in the cloud.
Designed for developers at every level, this comprehensive resource dives deep into real-world use cases, sample code, and best practices. It starts with the fundamentals of Docker and builds up to advanced topics such as Docker Compose, secure deployments, CI/CD pipelines, and running containers in production environments like Azure, AWS, and Kubernetes.
You’ll learn how to containerize different types of .NET applications—console apps, ASP.NET Core web apps, microservices—and connect them with containerized databases and services. With step-by-step instructions, you’ll explore how to optimize image size, troubleshoot issues, write efficient Dockerfiles, and implement secure, scalable containers for real-world scenarios.
Inside the Book:

• Learn the core concepts of Docker, including containers, images, volumes, and networks
• Install Docker Desktop and configure your development environment for .NET projects
• Write Dockerfiles and .dockerignore files to create optimized .NET images
• Containerize .NET console and web applications using multi-stage builds
• Run and connect to databases like SQL Server and PostgreSQL in Docker
• Debug and monitor Dockerized applications with logging and health checks
• Use Docker Compose to manage multi-container applications with .NET, Redis, RabbitMQ, and more
• Implement secure development practices including secrets management and non-root containers
• Push images to Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry, and Azure Container Registry
• Automate testing, builds, and deployments using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Azure DevOps
• Deploy Docker containers to cloud environments and orchestrate them with Kubernetes
• Monitor and scale applications with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Docker Swarm

With practical examples and fully-documented sample Dockerfiles and Compose configurations, this book gives you a blueprint for using Docker in every phase of the software development lifecycle.
Who This Book Is For:

• .NET developers who want to learn Docker from scratch or improve their container skills
• Software engineers building microservices or cloud-native apps with .NET
• DevOps professionals managing container-based deployment pipelines
• Technical leads designing scalable and portable software architectures
• Developers transitioning from traditional deployment models to containerized workflows

Whether you're building small apps or enterprise systems, this book will help you eliminate the “it works on my machine” problem and bring consistency to your development and deployment processes. Building .NET Apps with Docker is your complete roadmap to developing and shipping high-performance .NET applications using modern container technology.