Setting up an EC2 instance to run a Docker container

To run a Docker container on an EC2 instance, we first have to set up an instance with a Docker installation and add an ec2-user to the Docker group so that we can execute Docker commands with an ec2-user rather than as a root user, which we will be covering in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Switch to the root user from the ec2-user user by executing the following command:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-34-99 ~]$ sudo su
[root@ip-172-31-34-99 ec2-user]#

2. Install Docker and update an EC2 instance by executing the following commands:

[root@ip-172-31-34-99 ec2-user] yum install -y docker
[root@ip-172-31-34-99 ec2-user] yum update -y

3. Start Docker as a service on an EC2 instance by executing the following command:

[root@ip-172-31-34-99 ec2-user] service docker start

4. Add ec2-user to the docker group so that you can execute Docker commands without using sudo, as follows:

[root@ip-172-31-34-99 ec2-user] usermod -a -G docker ec2-user

5. Log out of the EC2 instance by executing...