The first part in this series went over the basics of setting up a new Rails app using Docker. Part one also showed how to leverage docker-compose in setting up your application to be run. This second part of the series will take a deeper look into taking docker-compose further to architect a more complex Rails application. Most Rails applications utitlize several external services to augment the core Rails service. Follow along to see how to add databases and web servers to create a more complete package.

Sometimes you want to run some trivial software on an EC2 instance. You don’t really pay attention to what the requirements are or have any performance concerns. So you end up spinning up something with very minimal resources. The software hums along nicely and you think nothing of it. It runs for several days, unnoticed. Then you realize the software stops running for some reason requiring you to restart it. Since you somewhat need the software to run, it becomes a bit annoying. Not annoying enough for a full out solution, but annoying enough you want to have to stop intervening.

There’s nothing like starting with a clean slate on a new Ruby on Rails project. Creating a new project on the latest version of Ruby and Rails is a great way to keep your skills sharp. Using docker and docker-compose to create a new Rails app has never been simpler. In addition, you are defining your infrastructure from the start. This will ensure a smoother transition to production, and increase the maintainability of your project.