Loading an ML Model on top of a Docker Container

6 min readMay 30, 2021

What is ML?

Almost everyone, in the field of computer science at least, has come across the term Machine Learning or ML for short, most of them even have a brief idea about it, but what it means and how to implement is known to only a very few of the masses.

In simple words, Machine learning is a part of artificial intelligence that enables a system to learn from the data provided by it. The data provided to it is known as a dataset. Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as “training data”, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so.

What is Docker?

Docker is a set of the platform as service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers.

A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. Available for both Linux and Windows-based applications, containerized software will always run the same, regardless of the infrastructure.

What is our TASK?

Our task is to create a machine learning model in python and then load the model on top of a docker container. Using a docker container may have a lot of reasons but the primary reason is using a docker container not only saves time but also saves memory.

For our current task at hand, we have a dataset containing the salary data of some employees based on their years of experience in the field. Our goal is to predict the salary of a new employee based on his/her years of experience in the field. We will use python3 for the programming and centos 8 as our docker container OS.

I am using RHEL8 (Redhat Enterprise Linux) as the base OS to install docker on top.

NOTE: If you are using the Linux OS on top of another OS such as Windows using Virtualization software such as Virtual Box,VM-Ware, etc. , you need to copy/transfer your dataset file to the Linux OS. One of the ways to do this is by creating a shared folder using the virtual box OS settings. (There are many different ways to transfer a file from the base OS to the VirtualBox OS if this method, for some reasons, does not work in your case then you can try for other methods too.)

Following is the step by step instruction to perform this task:

STEP 1: Install Docker

Step 1.1:

Go to the root account of the OS and then go to cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ and create a repo file for docker. Use the vim editor (any editor of your preference) to create a docker.repo file (you can give any name to the file just the extension should be .repo)

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
vim docker.repo

Step 1.2:

In the vim editor, press i to enter in insert mode and then write exact lines and save the file by pressing esc key then :wq and then enter.

Step 1.3:

Now update the yum repository using the command yum repolist or dnf repolist (only in RHEL8) and see the docker repo is successfully made.

dnf repolist

Step1.4:

Now Download the docker-ce software that is the community version. Use command

yum install docker-ce –nobest -y

dnf install docker-ce –nobest -y

Step 1.5:

Now we need to add firewall rules to activate masquerade, Port80, and 443 so that we won’t face any difficulty in Connectivity inside Docker Container.