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Kristiyan Velkov
Kristiyan Velkov

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Introducing Docker Offload

Docker Offload is a fully managed service that lets you execute Docker builds and run containers in the cloud while maintaining your familiar local development experience.

It provides on-demand cloud infrastructure for fast, consistent builds and compute-intensive workloads like running LLMs, machine learning pipelines, and GPU-accelerated applications.This is ideal if you want to leverage cloud resources or if your local machine doesn't meet the hardware requirements to run the model locally.

Why use Docker Offload?

  • Docker Offload is designed to support modern development teams working across local and cloud environments. It helps you:
  • Offload heavy builds and runs to fast, scalable infrastructure
  • Accelerate feedback loops in development and testing
  • Run containers that require more resources than your local setup can provide
  • Use Docker Compose to manage complex, multi-service apps that need cloud resources
  • Docker Offload is ideal for high-velocity development workflows that need the flexibility of the cloud without sacrificing the simplicity of local tools.

How to get started?

Step 1: Sign up and subscribe to Docker Offload for access

To access Docker Offload, you must sign up and subscribe.

Step 2: Start Docker Offload

Start Docker Desktop and sign in with your account.

Open a terminal and run the following command to start Docker Offload:

$ docker offload start

When prompted, select your Docker account to use for Docker Offload. This account will consume credits for your Docker Offload usage.

When prompted, select whether to enable GPU support. If you choose to enable GPU support, Docker Offload will run in an instance with an NVIDIA L4 GPU, which is useful for machine learning or compute-intensive workloads.

Note

Enabling GPU support consumes more budget. For more details, see Docker Offload usage.

Step 3: Run a container with Docker Offload

After starting Docker Offload, Docker Desktop connects to a secure cloud environment that mirrors your local experience. When you run builds or containers, they execute remotely, but behave just like local ones.

To verify that Docker Offload is working, run a container:

$ docker run --rm hello-world
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If you enabled GPU support, you can also run a GPU-enabled container:

$ docker run --rm --gpus all hello-world
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If Docker Offload is working, you'll see Hello from Docker! in the terminal output.

Step 4: Stop Docker Offload

When you're done using Docker Offload, you can stop it. When stopped, you build images and run containers locally.

$ docker offload stop
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To start Docker Offload again, run the docker offload start command. That's easy it is!

Full post: https://open.substack.com/pub/frontendworld/p/introducing-docker-offload?r=2uxgw9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Top comments (1)

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Eva Bojorges •

Fantastic post, thanks for sharing what you can do with offload.