Merge pull request #122 from retrohacker/master

Best Practices Document

Author: William Blankenship

README.md

@@ -42,6 +42,8 @@ The image assumes that your application has a file named
 dependencies and defining its [start
 script](https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scripts#default-values).
 
+We have assembled a [Best Practices Guide](./docs/BestPractices.md) for those using these images on a daily basis.
+
 ## Run a single Node.js script
 
 For many simple, single file projects, you may find it inconvenient to write a

docs/BestPractices.md

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# Docker and Node.js Best Practices
+
+## Environment Variables
+
+Run with `NODE_ENV` set to `production`. This is the way you would pass inn secrets and other runtime configurations to your application as well.
+
+```
+-e "NODE_ENV=production"
+```
+
+## Non-root User
+
+By default Docker runs container as root which inside of the container can pose as a security issue. You would want to run the container as an unprivileged user wherever possible. This is however not supported out of the box with the `node` Docker image.
+
+```Dockerfile
+FROM node:4.1.2
+# Add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently
+RUN groupadd -r app && useradd -r -g app app 
+```
+
+This Docker Image can than be run with the `app` user in the following way: 
+
+```
+-u "app"
+```
+
+#### Memory
+
+By default any Docker Container may consume as much of the hardware such as CPU and RAM. If you are running multiple containers on the same host you should limit how much memory they can consume.     
+
+```
+-m "300M" --memory-swap "1G"
+```
+
+## CMD
+
+When creating an image, you can bypass the `package.json`'s `start` command and bake it directly into the image itself. This reduces the number of processes running inside of your container.
+
+```Dockerfile
+CMD ["node","index.js"]
+```
+
+## Docker Run
+
+Here is an example of how you would run a default Node.JS Docker Containerized application: 
+
+```
+$ docker run \
+  -e "NODE_ENV=production" \
+  -u "app" \
+  -m "300M" --memory-swap "1G" \
+  -w "/usr/src/app" \
+  --name "my-nodejs-app" \
+  node [script]
+```
+
+## Security
+
+The Docker team has provided a tool to analyze your running containers for potential security issues. You can download and run this tool from here: https://github.com/docker/docker-bench-security