How to Install Portainer (Developer Tutorial)

What is Portainer?

Portainer is a lightweight, open-source platform that simplifies the management of containerized applications running on Docker, Kubernetes, and other environments for container orchestration. The main objective of Portainer is to provide a graphical interface managing docker containers and docker group, making it easy to use and void the system administrator or developer of the complexity of managing the container through a command line. Developers and system administrators can do all this through a web-based dashboard that monitors, deploys, and manages containers, networks, images, and volumes in Portainer.

Portainer supports single-node and multi-node environments, such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes clusters, and Nomad environments. Its functionalities include managing the lifecycle of containers (start/stop/delete), monitoring resources, log access, and role-based access control to handle multi-user environments and make them safe easily. It also brings native integration for both Docker Compose and Kubernetes manifests to enable deployments of multi-container applications easily.

It is of real value to administrators who need greater visibility and control over their infrastructure, especially in a production environment. It is also easier to adopt among new users. It is popular for small teams and large enterprises that require an efficient, streamlined manner of container management and orchestration of complex applications.

Features of Portainer

Portainer provides features that make it easier to operate containerized applications. Some of the significant features are as follows

1. User-friendly Web Interface

Portainer UI offers an easy-to-use, web-based GUI that helps ensure that everything related to managing a container, network, volume, and images is implemented with less reliance on the command line.

2. Multi-platform Support

It supports multi-platforms:

• Docker: Portainer manages either a single-host or Docker Swarm environment.
• Kubernetes: It manages Kubernetes clusters and workloads.
• Nomad: Portainer offers integration capabilities for the orchestrator, HashiCorp Nomad.

3. Container Life Cycle Management

It is pretty easy to allow different operations, such as starting, stopping, restarting, pausing, and deleting a container.

4. Image Management

Pulls images from registries and manages the local image repositories. They also delete unused images and integrate with private Docker registries.

5. Stack Management

This allows one to deploy and manage multi-container applications using Docker Compose or Kubernetes manifests, also known as Helm charts for Kubernetes.

6. Volume and Network Management

This simplifies the creation of and manages Docker containers, volumes, and networks and their deletion, meaning you are entirely in control over your persistent data and network configurations, similar to how it's done in the Docker hub.

7. Role-based Access Control (RBAC)

It controls access and permissions for different users in the environment, giving fine-grained control over who can do what.

8. Logs and Monitoring

It provides real-time container logs and the most basic performance metrics, like CPU and memory usage, to help monitor and debug.

9. Templates and App Catalog

Offers ready-made application templates that simplify the deployment of common services or apps.

10. External Authentication

It supports two types of authentication systems, LDAP and OAuth-based, which strengthen security and provide solid integration with corporate environments.

11. Backup and Restore

It allows the capability to back up and restore Portainer's settings and environments to ensure the recovery process will be efficient in case of failures.

12. API Access

Controls programmatically or integrates external tools with full-featured API.

These features make Portainer great for containerized application administrators working in development, testing, or production environments by both rookies and veterans alike.

Install portainer

In principle, Portainer consists of two clearly defined parts: the Portainer Server and the Portainer Agent. These are extremely lightweight Docker containers that run on a Docker engine. Here, we will guide you through the steps to install a Portainer Server container within your Windows environment with WSL and Docker Desktop already installed.

Requirement

• After you have Docker installed, also install Docker Desktop's newest version.
• Need administrative access to the machine to host your instance of Portainer Server.
• WSL2 and a Linux distribution are installed and activated. Before installing a Linux distribution for the first time, you want to make sure that you install WSL2.
• By default, the Portainer Server exposes the UI over port 9443 and a TCP tunnel server over port 8000. That's optional, though, and it's only necessary if you're using the Edge compute features with Edge agents.

Steps to install Portainer

To store the database on the Portainer Server. First, build the volume:

Then, use Powershell or the Command Prompt with the help of docker CLI or docker run command to execute the following code to download and install, then create the Portainer Server container.

Or search for the container name in the search box, which is available on the docker.

You now have the Portainer Server installed. Running will allow you to determine if the Portainer Server container has begun.

Logging into Portainer

Once installation is complete, you can access your Portainer Server instance in a web browser at https://localhost:9443

Replace localhost with the proper IP address or FQDN if you used one above and port if you changed it prior. It will then present you with the initial setup page of the Portainer Server.

An administrator will be your first user. Although admin is the default login, you are free to modify it. The password needs to match the specified parameters and have a minimum length of 12 characters. On the next page, Copy the Portainer community edition license key you were given, paste it into the box, and press Submit.

On the next, it will redirect to Portainer dashboard and show the list of environments available on the machine. We can connect through the existing docker containers by clicking the connect button.

Once connected, we can view all available containers inside the portainer's docker.

Click Add Environments to add more environments to this Portainer instance for management. If not, select Get Started to begin utilizing Portainer.

What is IronsecureDoc?

IronSecureDoc is a security tool for documents, protecting sensitive files by providing encryption, redaction, and digital signing features. This will allow the use of securing PDF files so that one can control their personal and confidential data in hand. Features include password protection, compliance with such standards as PDF/A, and digital certification, primarily used in legal health care or financial fields. The software is accessible as an REST API, integrated into different workflows, and can be used as a docker for scalable, cloud-friendly security solutions.

Features of IronSecureDoc

IronSecureDoc is thus quite impressive in handling PDF security and document management. Its features include encryption, redaction, and digital signing.

Encryption: This feature provides for the encryption of the PDF document with 128 or 256-bit encryption and password-based security to keep away all sorts of data confidentiality.

Redaction: This feature removes confidential data, such as personal identifiers or other sensitive information, while remaining within the scope of privacy standards and regulations.

Digital Signing: It also facilitates digital signing with notarizing PDFs because it allows .pfx or.p12 to make the document authentic.

Install and Running IronsecureDoc

Use this command to pull the IronSecureDoc Docker image from the repository in an open terminal window or Command Prompt.

docker pull ironsoftwareofficial/ironsecuredoc

docker pull ironsoftwareofficial/ironsecuredoc

The container management options also help us view the IronSecureDoc container on the Portainer.

Now that the Docker container has pulled an image, we can run another command to start another running container called IronSecureDoc.

docker container run --rm -p 8080:8080 -e IronSecureDoc_LicenseKey=<IRONSECUREDOC_LICENSE_KEY> -e ENVIRONMENT=Development -e HTTP_PORTS=8080 ironsoftwareofficial/ironsecuredoc:latest

docker container run --rm -p 8080:8080 -e IronSecureDoc_LicenseKey=<IRONSECUREDOC_LICENSE_KEY> -e ENVIRONMENT=Development -e HTTP_PORTS=8080 ironsoftwareofficial/ironsecuredoc:latest

Using IronSecuredoc with Docker Container

IronSecureDoc can be used after installation and launch in Docker to redact, certify, and encrypt documents with the help of its REST API, which is also mentioned elsewhere. Here's a link to API endpoints and documentation: http://localhost:8080/swagger/index.html.

For example, to submit a document for encryption, you can send a POST request to the IronSecureDoc API:

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8080/v1/document-services/pdfs/encrypt?user_password=demo' \
  -H 'accept: */*' \
  -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
  -F 'pdf_file=@test.pdf;type=application/pdf'

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8080/v1/document-services/pdfs/encrypt?user_password=demo' \
  -H 'accept: */*' \
  -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
  -F 'pdf_file=@test.pdf;type=application/pdf'

This will send the document to IronSecureDoc, which will apply the appropriate encryption.

Conclusion

Portainer and IronSecureDoc are solid tools for container management and secure document management, which prove to be of great value in the modern age of DevOps and IT.

Portainer provides an intuitive, modern UI that makes deploying, monitoring, and scaling containerized applications on Docker, Kubernetes, and other container platforms simple. With a long list of features, including RBAC, logs, stack management, and multi-platform support, it is so simple that small teams can easily find it accessible to big corporations.

IronSecureDoc targets signing, encryption, and securing sensitive documents and other digital assets in a Docker environment on a security watch. It aims to improve its overall organizational posture regarding security, which is in line with data protection standards and reduces risk.

Altogether, these two technologies allow users to manage containers with a guarantee of integrity and security for all critical documents in such an environment. Portainer and IronSecureDoc are. Hence, milestones in the contemporary cloud and containerized paradigm, be it managing applications at scale or securing essential data. Click this link to learn more about Ironsecuredoc licensing. To learn more about the different products that Iron Software offers, follow this link.