Session
Beyond Docker: Mastering Container Workflows with Podman, Skopeo & Buildah
Saturday 25 July
12:00 – 13:00
Educator 2
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Containers have become the backbone of modern application deployment, yet many developers remain tethered to Docker as their sole container tooling. This session takes you beyond the basics and into the powerful, daemonless ecosystem of Podman, Skopeo, and Buildah — a trio of OCI-compliant tools that offer rootless containers, fine-grained image management, and streamlined CI/CD integration without requiring a persistent daemon. Whether you're running workloads on bare metal, in the cloud, or feeding into Kubernetes clusters, these tools give you greater security, flexibility, and control.
Attendees will explore advanced Podman concepts including pod-based workflows that mirror Kubernetes pod semantics, rootless container networking, systemd integration for production-grade service management, and leveraging Podman Compose as a drop-in replacement for Docker Compose. We'll dive into Skopeo for inspecting and copying container images across registries without pulling them locally — a game-changer for multi-registry strategies and air-gapped environments. Buildah rounds out the toolkit with its scriptable, layer-by-layer image building approach that eliminates the need for Dockerfiles entirely when granular control is required.
The session blends live demonstrations with real-world scenarios drawn from production Linux environments, covering topics such as signing and verifying images, integrating these tools into CI/CD pipelines, migrating existing Docker workflows, and preparing container workloads for orchestration with Kubernetes. By the end, attendees will have a practical toolkit and the confidence to adopt a daemonless container strategy that is secure, portable, and production-ready.
Attendees will explore advanced Podman concepts including pod-based workflows that mirror Kubernetes pod semantics, rootless container networking, systemd integration for production-grade service management, and leveraging Podman Compose as a drop-in replacement for Docker Compose. We'll dive into Skopeo for inspecting and copying container images across registries without pulling them locally — a game-changer for multi-registry strategies and air-gapped environments. Buildah rounds out the toolkit with its scriptable, layer-by-layer image building approach that eliminates the need for Dockerfiles entirely when granular control is required.
The session blends live demonstrations with real-world scenarios drawn from production Linux environments, covering topics such as signing and verifying images, integrating these tools into CI/CD pipelines, migrating existing Docker workflows, and preparing container workloads for orchestration with Kubernetes. By the end, attendees will have a practical toolkit and the confidence to adopt a daemonless container strategy that is secure, portable, and production-ready.
