14.1.2 Production Container Readiness

Production container readiness assesses whether a running container's actual runtime configuration — not just its underlying image — meets production requirements: appropriate restart policy, resource limits, health checks, and proper non-root execution, each independently verifiable against the actual running instance.

Verifying Restart Policy Is Properly Configured

Confirming the container will automatically recover from a crash without manual intervention.

docker inspect myapp --format '{{.HostConfig.RestartPolicy.Name}}'

on-failure

Verifying Resource Limits Are Actually Applied

Confirming the running container actually has the intended resource constraints in place, not just declared somewhere but never actually applied.

docker inspect myapp --format '{{.HostConfig.Memory}}'

536870912

This confirms a memory limit is genuinely enforced on the running container, matching whatever was intended in its configuration.

Verifying the Container Is Running as a Non-Root User

Confirming the actual running process isn't operating with unnecessary root privileges.

docker exec myapp whoami

appuser

Verifying Health Check Status

Confirming the container's health check is actually configured and currently passing.

docker inspect myapp --format '{{.State.Health.Status}}'

healthy

Running This Verification as a Deliberate, Repeatable Check

Scripting these checks together provides a quick, repeatable way to confirm a container's production readiness at any point.

#!/bin/bash
docker inspect myapp --format '{{.HostConfig.RestartPolicy.Name}} {{.HostConfig.Memory}} {{.State.Health.Status}}'

Why Production Container Readiness Matters

Verifying these specific runtime configuration details against the actual running container — not just assuming they're correctly applied based on configuration files alone — provides genuine confidence that a deployed container meets production requirements in practice, not just on paper.