Containers How-to Guides

Task-oriented recipes for common container jobs on Windows with Docker Desktop. Each one is self-contained — jump to the task you need. They assume Docker Desktop is installed and running, and the commands are written for PowerShell.

How to Run RabbitMQ in Docker

Goal: get a RabbitMQ broker running locally with its management UI, so your app has something to talk to.

docker run `
    --detach `
    --hostname rabbit `
    --name dev-rabbit `
    --publish 5672:5672 `
    --publish 15672:15672 `
    rabbitmq:3-management

That publishes two ports: 5672 for the AMQP protocol your app connects on, and 15672 for the management UI. Open http://localhost:15672 in a browser and sign in with the default credentials, guest / guest.

Those default credentials only work over localhost. RabbitMQ blocks the guest account on remote connections by design, so don’t expect them to work once you expose the broker beyond your machine.

How to Pass Secrets to a Container

Goal: hand a password to a container during local development without committing it anywhere.

Don’t bake secrets into image environment variables — they end up in the image history for anyone to read. For local work, prompt for the value and pass it through --env:

$dbPassword = Read-Host -AsSecureString "DB password"
$plain = [Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto(
    [Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($dbPassword)
)
docker run --env DB_PASSWORD=$plain myapp

Heads up: this is fine for your own machine, but it isn’t a production pattern. The value still lands in the container’s environment and shows up in docker inspect. For production, use Docker secrets or whatever secret store your orchestrator provides.

How to Use Docker Behind a Corporate Proxy

Goal: let Docker pull images when your network forces traffic through a proxy.

Point Docker Desktop at your proxy first:

1. Open Docker Desktop > Settings > Resources > Proxies.
2. Set Web Server (HTTP) and Secure Web Server (HTTPS) to your proxy URL (for example, http://proxy.corp.example.com:8080).
3. Add localhost,127.0.0.1 to the Bypass list.
4. Click Apply & Restart.

That covers image pulls. If a CLI tool inside a container also needs the proxy — say it fetches packages at runtime — pass the proxy settings through as environment variables too:

docker run `
    --env HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.corp.example.com:8080 `
    --env HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.corp.example.com:8080 `
    --env NO_PROXY=localhost,127.0.0.1 `
    myapp

See Also

• Containers Tutorial — start here if you are new to Docker
• Containers Reference — full Docker CLI cheat sheet
• Containers Explanation — why containers matter and what they don’t solve