Container Lifecycle Workflow#

This article builds a complete Temporal workflow that manages Docker container lifecycle operations: inspect a container, stop it if running, create a snapshot (commit), and handle failures by restarting the container. It demonstrates every pattern from Multi-Stage Temporal Workflows in a concrete, runnable example.

The full source is in the companion repo under container-lifecycle/.

The Use Case#

You need to automate container maintenance: take a snapshot of a running container for backup or migration purposes. The sequence is:

Image Patching and Lifecycle#

Building a container image and deploying it is the easy part. Keeping it patched over weeks, months, and years is where most teams fail. A container image deployed today with zero known vulnerabilities will accumulate CVEs as new vulnerabilities are disclosed against its OS packages, language runtime, and dependencies. You need an automated system that detects stale base images, triggers rebuilds, and rolls out updates safely.