Docker Certified Associate (DCA) study plan

Install Docker Engine (Community Edition) on a Linux host and on Docker Desktop, then verify with docker version, docker info, and hello-world

Explain the difference between images, containers, volumes, networks, and the daemon/client split by drawing the architecture from memory

Run containers in detached and interactive modes, map ports with -p, and pass environment variables with -e

Inspect a running container with docker inspect and read the JSON to find IP address, mounts, and restart policy

Practice the container lifecycle: create, start, stop, restart, pause, rm, and rm -f

Build custom images from a Dockerfile using FROM, RUN, COPY, ENV, EXPOSE, CMD, and ENTRYPOINT

Compare CMD and ENTRYPOINT behavior by building two variants and observing runtime argument handling

Use multi-stage builds to produce a small final image and compare image size before and after

Write a .dockerignore file and measure build context size impact on build time

Tag images, push them to a local registry, and pull them back

Create named volumes and bind mounts, then demonstrate data persistence across container removal

Build user-defined bridge networks and prove DNS-based service discovery between two containers

Publish containers to host ports and explain the difference between host, bridge, and none network modes

Configure container resource limits with --memory and --cpus and observe behavior when limits are exceeded

Set restart policies and test them by killing a container process

Write a docker-compose.yml defining services, networks, volumes, and environment files

Use docker compose up, down, logs, exec, and ps to operate the stack

Override configuration with a compose override file for a development profile

Explain how the Docker Enterprise Edition platform relates to Community Edition, including what an enterprise subscription adds at a conceptual level

Review container security basics: running as non-root USER, read-only filesystem, and dropping capabilities

Describe the image layer model and explain how the build cache is invalidated by instruction order

Reduce a bloated image by reordering Dockerfile instructions and combining RUN steps, documenting the size delta

Use docker history and docker image inspect to audit layers and metadata

Apply image tagging and digest pinning strategy for reproducible deployments

Scan an image for vulnerabilities with a scanner of your choice and interpret the report

Configure logging drivers and inspect container logs through docker logs and the host logging path

Collect container metrics with docker stats and explain what each column measures

Diagnose a failing container using docker inspect, docker logs, docker exec, and exit codes

Troubleshoot a port conflict, a DNS failure between containers, and a permission-denied volume mount

Set up a healthcheck in a Dockerfile and in compose, then observe unhealthy state transitions

Explain how the Docker daemon, containerd, and runc interact during container start

Describe namespaces and cgroups at a conceptual level and map each to a Docker feature (isolation and limits)

Review daemon configuration options such as data-root, log driver, and registry mirrors in daemon.json

Explain registry concepts: repositories, tags, digests, and the role of authentication

Summarize how enterprise platform features (access control, image policy, centralized management) address team-scale operations

Complete two timed practice sets of at least 40 mixed questions each, scoring above 80 percent

Re-drill every missed item by re-running the underlying command until the concept is demonstrated

Rebuild the week 4 compose stack from scratch on a clean host without notes

Review your cheat sheet and journal, correcting any command that no longer matches current behavior