Docker Certified Associate (DCA) Online Training & Certification Prep
Master container architecture, image management, networking, storage, and orchestration with Docker Swarm. Hands-on Live Labs on real Docker environments prepare you for every domain of the Docker Certified Associate exam.
Course Overview
Docker has become the de facto standard for packaging and shipping applications as containers, and the Docker Certified Associate credential demonstrates to employers that you can design, build, and operate containerized workloads in production. This course covers every DCA exam domain with a balance of conceptual depth and intensive hands-on practice.
You will start by building a solid foundation in container theory — understanding the OCI image specification, the layered union filesystem, and how the Docker daemon manages the container lifecycle. From there, the course moves through image creation best practices: writing efficient multi-stage Dockerfiles, minimizing layer count, leveraging the build cache, and publishing images to Docker Hub and private registries.
Networking and storage are treated with production realism. You will configure bridge, host, overlay, and Macvlan networks, implement DNS-based service discovery, manage named volumes and bind mounts, and encrypt overlay networks for multi-host deployments. Security coverage spans image signing with Docker Content Trust, user-namespace remapping, AppArmor and seccomp profiles, secrets management, and least-privilege container design.
The orchestration section dives deep into Docker Swarm: initializing and securing a multi-node cluster, deploying and updating services with rolling-update strategies, scaling replicas, configuring health checks, and draining nodes for maintenance — all skills tested directly in the DCA practical domains.
Every concept is reinforced in Boost Live Labs — provisioned Docker Engine hosts where you run real commands, not simulations. Three learning modalities (self-paced video, instructor-led cohort, and mentored 1-on-1) let you match the format to your schedule. The course includes our Pass Guarantee: if you do not pass on your first attempt, we support your retake at no additional cost.
What You'll Learn
- Build optimized Docker images using multi-stage Dockerfiles and build-cache best practices
- Push and pull images from Docker Hub and private registries with authentication and access controls
- Configure bridge, overlay, host, and Macvlan networks for single-host and multi-host deployments
- Implement named volumes, bind mounts, and tmpfs for persistent and ephemeral container storage
- Deploy and manage a Docker Swarm cluster including manager quorum and worker promotion
- Roll out service updates with rollback policies and configure replica scaling under load
- Secure containers with Docker Content Trust, secrets, user-namespace remapping, and runtime profiles
- Troubleshoot container, network, and storage failures using Docker CLI inspection and logs
- Configure Docker Engine for production including logging drivers and daemon.json tuning
- Interpret and author Docker Compose files for multi-service application stacks
Who This Course Is For
- Software engineers moving from local development to containerized CI/CD pipelines
- DevOps engineers responsible for container build and deployment workflows
- Systems administrators adopting Docker for application packaging
- Platform engineers evaluating Docker Swarm for orchestration
- Site reliability engineers managing containerized services in production
Course Outline
- OCI image and runtime specifications
- Docker daemon, containerd, and runc architecture
- Container lifecycle (create, start, pause, stop, remove)
- Namespaces and cgroups as isolation primitives
- Lab: installing Docker Engine and running your first container
- Writing efficient Dockerfiles: FROM, RUN, COPY, ENTRYPOINT, CMD
- Multi-stage builds to minimize image size
- Build cache mechanics and cache-busting patterns
- Tagging, versioning, and image promotion strategies
- Pushing to Docker Hub, AWS ECR, and self-hosted registries
- Lab: build a multi-stage image and publish to a private registry
- Bridge network internals and iptables rules
- User-defined bridge networks and DNS service discovery
- Host and none network modes and their use cases
- Overlay networks for multi-host container communication
- Macvlan and IPvlan for direct L2 connectivity
- Lab: deploy a multi-container app across an encrypted overlay network
- Named volumes vs bind mounts vs tmpfs
- Volume drivers for cloud and NFS backends
- Sharing volumes between containers
- Backing up and restoring volume data
- Lab: configure persistent storage for a stateful database container
- Initializing a Swarm and joining manager and worker nodes
- Raft consensus and manager quorum requirements
- Deploying and inspecting services and stacks
- Rolling updates, rollback policies, and update parallelism
- Health checks, restart policies, and replica scaling
- Draining nodes for maintenance without downtime
- Lab: deploy a multi-service stack to a three-node Swarm and perform a rolling update
- Docker Content Trust and image signing with Notary
- User-namespace remapping to limit host exposure
- AppArmor profiles and seccomp filter application
- Secrets management with Docker Swarm secrets
- Least-privilege container design: read-only filesystems, dropped capabilities
- Lab: sign and verify images; deploy a service with secrets and a custom seccomp profile
- Logging drivers: json-file, syslog, fluentd, awslogs
- docker inspect, docker stats, and docker events for diagnostics
- Debugging container startup failures
- Network troubleshooting with nsenter and tcpdump
- Lab: diagnose and resolve a broken multi-container application
- Compose file structure: services, networks, volumes, configs
- Environment variable substitution and .env files
- Compose override files for environment-specific configuration
- Full domain review and practice questions
- Lab: author and deploy a production-style Compose application
About the Certification Exam
- Exam code
- DCA
- Length
- 90 minutes
- Questions
- 55 questions (multiple choice, discrete option multiple choice, and matching)
- Passing score
- Pass/Fail u2014 score communicated immediately
- Exam cost
- ~$250 USD
- Where
- Mirantis-authorized testing centers and online proctored via Pearson VUE
The certification exam fee is paid separately to the testing provider and is not included in the course price unless stated otherwise.
Live Labs Included
Hands-on practice on real environments
This course includes Live Labs — direct access to real hardware and cloud environments so you build the skills the exam actually tests.
- Multi-stage Dockerfile workshop: reduce a Node.js application image from 900 MB to under 120 MB using multi-stage builds and .dockerignore on a live Docker Engine host
- Overlay network lab: connect containers across a two-node cluster using an encrypted overlay network, verify DNS resolution, and test failover
- Swarm orchestration lab: initialize a three-node Swarm (one manager, two workers), deploy a replicated service, execute a zero-downtime rolling update, and roll back a bad deploy
- Secrets and security lab: create and rotate Docker Swarm secrets, apply a custom seccomp profile, and verify user-namespace remapping is isolating container root from host root
- Storage persistence lab: attach a named volume to a PostgreSQL container, write data, remove the container, and verify data survives reattachment to a new container
- Registry operations lab: push a signed image to a private registry with Docker Content Trust enabled, then verify a tampered image is rejected on pull
Pass Guarantee Included
Complete this course and if you don't pass the certification exam on your first attempt, we'll refund your course fee or give you a free retake — your choice.
