Apart from running your registry in a dedicated Docker server, other cloud and on-premises options exist.
Most public cloud providers offer paid online registries and container-hosting solutions that you can easily use while running in the cloud. Some of them are as follows:
- Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR): This is a popular AWS offering you can use if your infrastructure runs on AWS. It is a highly available, highly performant, fully managed solution.
It can host public and private registries, and you only pay for the storage you consume and the amount of data transferred to the internet. The best part is that it integrates with AWS IAM.
- Google Container Registry (GCR): Backed by Google Cloud Storage (GCS), GCR is one of the best choices if you run your infrastructure on GCP. It hosts both public and private repositories, and you only pay for the storage on GCS.
- Azure Container Registry (ACR): This fully managed, geo-replicated container registry only supports a private registry. It is a good option if you are running your infrastructure on Azure. Besides storing container images, it also stores Helm charts and other artifacts that help you manage your containers.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry is a highly available Oracle-managed container registry. It can host both public and private repositories.
- CoreOS Quay: Thissupports OAuth and LDAP authentication. It offers both (paid) private and (free) public repositories, automatic security scanning, and automated image builds via integration with GitLab, GitHub, and Bitbucket.
If you don’t want to go with managed options in the cloud or run on-premises, you can also use distribution management software such as Sonatype Nexus or JFrog Artifactory. Both tools support Docker registries out of the box. You can create a Docker registry there using fancy UIs, and then use docker login to connect to the registry.