Podman — Pods

A pod groups one or more containers together so they can be managed as a single unit — the same concept Kubernetes uses for its pods. Podman can create and run pods locally, including rootless pods.

Creating a rootless pod

Create a pod:

podman pod create

Create a pod and publish it through a single port — this maps host port 8081 to port 80 inside the pod, and names the pod p3-web:

podman pod create --name p3-web -p 8081:80

Add a container to that pod:

podman run --pod p3-web -d --name p3-web docker.io/library/nginx:latest

YAML file basics

Podman pods can also be described declaratively in a YAML manifest, similar in spirit to a Kubernetes pod spec.

apiVersion identifies the API schema version being used:

apiVersion: v1

kind declares what kind of object this manifest describes — here, a pod:

kind: Pod

metadata (with a name field) gives the pod its identity:

metadata:
  name: <pod-name>

spec describes what should actually run inside the pod, starting with its containers:

spec:
  containers:

Each container entry needs a name, and an image to pull (here, from Docker Hub):

- name: <container name>
  image: nginx:latest

ports exposes a container port on the host — here, nginx listens on port 80 inside the pod, and that's exposed on host port 8080:

ports:
  - containerPort: 80 # nginx listens on 80 inside the pod
    hostPort: 8080     # expose it on the host at 8080