How to Install Docker on CentOS and Deploy a Spring Boot Application

Environment: SpringBoot 2.2.10.RELEASE + Docker + CentOS 7 + JDK 8

Install and Configure Docker

Update yum packages to the latest version. yum update Remove old Docker packages.

yum remove docker docker-common docker-selinux docker-engine

Install required packages (yum-utils provides yum-config-manager, plus device‑mapper dependencies).

yum install -y yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

Add the Docker yum repository.

yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

List all available Docker CE versions. yum list docker-ce --showduplicates | sort -r Install Docker CE. yum install docker-ce Start the Docker service. systemctl start docker Verify the Docker version.

docker version

Optional: Install Docker‑Compose

Download Docker‑Compose binary.

Add execution permission. chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose Create a symbolic link.

ln -s /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose

Check the installed version.

docker-compose --version

Pull a Tomcat Image

Search for Tomcat images and pull the latest one.

docker search tomcat

docker pull tomcat

Deploy the Spring Boot Project

Create a new Spring Boot project named spring-boot-docker.

pom.xml Dependency

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

Controller

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/demo")
public class DemoController {
    @GetMapping("/index")
    public Object index() {
        return "docker container running...";
    }
}

Application Class

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootDockerApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder builder) {
        return builder.sources(SpringBootDockerApplication.class);
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringBootDockerApplication.class, args);
    }
}

Package the Application

mvn clean package -Dmaven.test.skip=true

Upload the generated JAR/WAR to the server.

Run with Tomcat Image

docker run -d --name demo-server \
  -v /root/apps/spring-boot-docker-1.0.0.war:/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/spring-boot-docker-1.0.0.war \
  -p 8080:8080 tomcat

Flags explanation:

-v: mount the project into the container

-p: map host port to container port (host:container)

-d: run in background

--name: container name

tomcat: image used

Check Running Containers

docker ps

Run a JAR Directly with OpenJDK Image

Search for a Java image and use OpenJDK.

docker search java

docker run -d --name demo-server \
  -v /root/apps/spring-boot-docker-1.0.0.jar:/usr/spring-boot-docker-1.0.0.jar \
  -p 8081:8080 openjdk \
  java -jar /usr/spring-boot-docker-1.0.0.jar

All steps complete – the Spring Boot application is now running inside Docker.