- What is Docker?
This topic introduces Docker fundamentals - what Docker is, how it compares to virtual machines, and why containers improve portability, efficiency, and scalability. You’ll learn about images; container and license management for WinCC OA containers; Docker Compose; health checks; and streamlined updating and patching. It also outlines core Docker components (client, daemon, images/registry, containers, volumes, networks) and basic commands like docker ps.
- Docker Image
Docker images are prepackaged application environments that act as templates for running containers. Because WinCC OA does not yet provide an official image (patch-release images are planned), this topic explains how to build a custom WinCC OA Docker image by extracting the required Debian packages, adapting the Dockerfile and entry point script, and building the image from the local folder.
- Container Management & Licensing?
Manage Docker containers with Portainer or the CLI to list, start/stop, inspect, view logs, and open interactive shells. Start a WinCC OA OA container by selecting the image, mapping required ports (e.g., 8443), setting environment variables for the project and license server, and using volumes to persist data across restarts. If the license server hosts multiple containers, set the UCM container serial in the project configuration to ensure a valid license.
- Running Multiple Containers
Use Docker Compose to define and persistently start multiple containers from a YAML file rather than running individual Docker commands. This topic demonstrates orchestrating a WinCC OA server with local and cloud PostgreSQL services and a DMZ web server, configuring images, volumes, networks, ports, and environment variables, and managing lifecycle with compose commands (up/down, build, detach, force-recreate) and required volume permissions.
- Health Check
Configure a Docker health check for the WinCC OA container so the remote web server waits until the service is ready instead of retrying on startup. A WinCC OA_health checks script periodically evaluates manager status and internal error state against a defined threshold (for example, fewer than 100 failure points) to mark the container healthy, which Docker Compose can enforce using depends_on with the service_healthy condition.
- Update
Explains how to perform a smooth patch update of WinCC OA using Docker Compose. Build the updated image (for example, patch 6) from your docker-compose YAML and restart the Compose project to apply the changes with minimal downtime.
