Control Panels + Docker CLI: What to Do in UI and What to Do in Terminal

Most teams today use both a control panel and the Docker CLI when managing servers. This mix often works well, but it also creates a common problem: you never know what you should do in the UI and what you must handle in the Docker container terminal. The result is confusion, slow work, and sometimes broken setups.

Control panels handle the “host stuff” — users, firewalls, updates, and all the basic things you want to see in a nice UI. Docker container terminal handles the real work of running apps in containers. One is comfort; the other is control.

This article will help you understand what to click in the UI and what to run in the Docker container terminal.

Decision Matrix: UI vs. Docker Terminal

When you work with both a control panel and the Docker container terminal, it helps to know where each tool fits. Some tasks are safer in the UI, while others only make sense in the terminal. A clear split keeps your setup clean and avoids conflict between the panel and your containers.

Here is a simple table you can use as a guide:

Why Use a Control Panel When You Already Have Docker?

A control panel handles the parts of your server that sit outside your containers. This is why panels still matter, even if Docker is the center of your workflow.

Panels Keep the Host Machine Healthy

A panel helps you manage the core parts of your server. You can update the OS, adjust firewall rules, check CPU/RAM usage, and create backups. These tasks are safer and clearer in a UI because you see everything in one place.

Panels also help you keep track of DNS settings, SSL certificates, and user accounts. These are jobs that don’t belong inside a container, so the UI makes them easier to control.

Panels Reduce On-Call Stress

The panel is often the fastest way to see what is wrong when something breaks at night. You can check load, kill stuck processes, or reboot the server with a single click. You don’t need to open the terminal or run a long chain of commands. This saves time and helps avoid panic.

When to Use the Control Panel (UI)

A control panel isn’t training wheels; it’s a fast, auditable way to operate the host: users, updates, firewall, DNS/SSL, and backups. Use it to keep the machine that runs your containers healthy; don’t use it to manage the containers themselves.

For Beginners or Occasional Ops

If you don’t live in the terminal every day, the UI reduces cognitive load and small mistakes. You get a clear status, guardrails, and a single place to see what changed — perfect for small teams and quick setups where speed and auditability matter more than full low‑level control.

For Server Maintenance, Hygiene, and Quick Fixes

Reach for the panel when you need to keep the base system in good shape:

• Apply OS/security updates and schedule reboots; see the “reboot required” status before you pull the trigger.
• Manage access using users, SSH keys, and sudo; rotate keys and avoid password logins.
• Enforce a baseline firewall: open or close inbound ports, default‑deny, allowlist your management IP, and enable Fail2ban. Note: Docker injects its own NAT rules; Docker‑aware policies belong in the CLI via the DOCKER-USER chain.
• Back up and restore the server; take a snapshot before making risky changes.
• Set A/AAAA and rDNS for clean mail, renew certs if TLS terminates on the host.
• Restart host services: panel‑managed daemons (panel’s nginx, postfix, cron) — not your app containers.

When it’s 3 AM, and something’s off, the UI shortens time‑to‑first‑signal:

• Check CPU/RAM/disk graphs, kill runaway host processes, and free space (logs/temp) via file manager.
• Fix DNS, rDNS, TTL, or renew a certificate to restore reachability quickly.
• Reboot a service or the host; use VNC if SSH is locked out.

You don’t need to open the Docker terminal for these. The fix is often just one click away.

Why the Docker Container Terminal Still Matters

A control panel can’t replace the Docker CLI for containers. The CLI (and Compose) is the only interface that exposes all runtime options, is fully scriptable, and behaves the same on a laptop, a CI runner, and any VPS. If you want your stack to be deterministic across servers, codify it in Compose/Git and operate it via the terminal.

The CLI Is the Source of Truth

The terminal doesn’t hide switches or defaults. What you type is exactly what runs and what teammates can repeat.

Panels differ by provider; the CLI doesn’t. Keep container config in code (Compose files, scripts, .env) so reviews, rollbacks, and migrations stay predictable.

What You Must Do in the Terminal

Because UIs rarely expose the full flag set, the following jobs belong in the Docker container terminal or Compose:

• Build and ship images with BuildKit/multi‑stage; pin tags (or digests) and push from CI.
• Run with exact runtime constraints: CPU/memory limits, --pids-limit, ulimits, restart policy, and healthchecks.
• Security hardening with --cap-drop=ALL (amd add back minimal caps), --read-only, --user 1000:1000, --no-new-privileges.
• Do networking as code with user‑defined networks, explicit port publishing (prefer loopback binds like 127.0.0.1:3000), and DNS options.
• Create/inspect named volumes, bind mounts where needed, and maintain consistent backups.
• Observe real‑time logs, inspect, events, and stats.
• Update and pull new images, recreate containers, and roll back by tag/digest — all in scripts or Compose.

Hardened docker run

docker run -d --name web \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --health-cmd='curl -fsS http://localhost:8080/health || exit 1' \
  --health-interval=10s --health-retries=3 \
  --read-only --cap-drop=ALL --cap-add=NET_BIND_SERVICE \
  --user 1000:1000 --pids-limit=200 --memory=512m \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \
  ghcr.io/org/app:1.2.3

Fast Incident Triage

User interfaces rarely offer you a summary of incidents.

docker ps --format 'table \t\t\t'
docker events --since 1h | grep -E 'die|oom|health_status'
docker inspect my-app --format '' | jq
docker stats --no-stream

Reproducible Builds and Pinned Artifacts

You need the CLI to build, tag, and pin what runs in production (by tag or digest). Panels don’t give you build flags, cache control, or the provenance you get from the Docker command line interface.

# Build locally or in CI
docker build -t ghcr.io/acme/app:1.2.3 .

# Pull by immutable digest and run exactly that artifact
docker pull ghcr.io/acme/app@sha256:<digest>
docker run -d ghcr.io/acme/app@sha256:<digest>

Compose can also reference digests (image: ghcr.io/acme/app@sha256:<digest>), which makes rollbacks exact and auditable.

Debugging Containers

Some failures are only visible from inside the container or its network namespace.

# Focused logs
docker logs --since=10m --tail=0 -f my-app

# Safe interactive shell for probes
docker exec -it my-app sh

# Network forensics using the app’s network namespace
docker run --rm --net container:my-app nicolaka/netshoot tcpdump -i any -c 50 port 443

exec creates a new shell inside the container. This is the safe choice for debugging. It’s not the same as attach, which connects you to the main process. That is why Docker exec vs. attach matters. One is for debugging, the other is for watching the process directly.

Data and Schema Work

Data‑touching tasks require ordered commands and explicit scopes — volumes, environment variables, and one‑off jobs.

# Run a one-off migration in an isolated, reproducible container
docker compose run --rm app ./manage.sh migrate

# Quick volume backup before risky changes
docker run --rm -v pgdata:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/pgdata-$(date +%F).tgz -C / data

These operations must live in code/CLI to avoid drift and “works on one server only” surprises.

Security and Custom Runtime

Fine‑grained isolation lives in the CLI/Compose: capabilities, seccomp, users, read‑only filesystems, and resource limits.

docker run -d --name web \
  --read-only --user 1000:1000 \
  --cap-drop=ALL --cap-add=NET_BIND_SERVICE \
  --security-opt no-new-privileges \
  --pids-limit=200 --memory=512m \
  ghcr.io/acme/app:1.2.3

Panels rarely show these, but without them, you leave excess privileges in place and increase the blast radius.

Networking Choreography

Attaching services to user‑defined networks, binding to loopback by default, and inspecting flows are all tasks for the Docker container terminal.

docker network create --subnet 172.30.0.0/24 app_net
docker run -d --network app_net -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 ghcr.io/acme/app:1.2.3
docker network inspect app_net | jq '.[0].Containers'

This prevents accidental exposure and keeps ingress rules predictable.

With the CLI/Compose, you see the full state of your containers, change it deterministically, and script it for every environment. That’s why — even with a panel — the terminal remains the core tool for running Docker at scale.

Panels for Docker as an Exception

Some specialized UIs exist specifically for managing Docker containers. Tools like Portainer or Rancher give you a visual interface for containers, networks, and volumes, while still letting you run commands in the Docker container terminal when needed.

These Docker-specific UIs are an exception to the general rule that most panels focus on the host, not the containers.

Docker CLI Tutorial + Control Panel: Hybrid Patterns

Most teams mix a control panel with the Docker CLI. The key is to pick one integration pattern and stick to it. Mixing ingress and ownership leads to drift and 3 AM incidents.

Assume a classic VPS with a control panel on the host and Docker/Compose for apps. The goal is to avoid split-brain between “what the panel thinks runs here” and “what Docker actually runs”.

Pattern 1: Panel as Edge, Apps in Docker CLI

Use this approach when you want the panel to own :80/:443, issue or renew certificates, and proxy to internal container ports. The panel runs on the host, terminates TLS, and forwards traffic to Docker.

Note that Docker’s NAT rules require firewall awareness: Docker can bypass host-level rules, unless you enforce policy in DOCKER-USER. There is also a real risk of port contention if the panel ships its own nginx or Apache and tries to “help” with vhosts.

So the setup becomes:

• Panel owns :80/:443 and manages certificates; containers listen on high ports (e.g., 127.0.0.1:8080).
• Apply firewall rules in a Docker-aware way (policy in DOCKER-USER).
• Compose deploys gated by health checks: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d --remove-orphans --wait – with healthchecks defined for every Internet-facing service.

Pattern 2: Docker as Edge, Panel for Host

If you want per-service routing via Traefik, Caddy, or nginx inside Docker, then follow this pattern. Here, releases go through CI/CD, and the UI is only for a quick glance at the host (resources, backups, updates), not for app routing.

Ensure that the panel does not bind :80/:443 and does not manage vhosts for these domains. ACME and renewals live inside containers (Traefik, Caddy, certbot), and container configs are the only source of truth.

Use this pattern when:

• Containers own :80/:443; the panel’s web daemons are moved off those ports or disabled.
• All app routing and TLS are defined in code (Compose files/labels).
• Health-gated rollout as above.

Pattern 3: UI for Host, CLI/Compose for Apps, CI/CD for Deploys

This path is great for clean separation of duties (ops and dev) and automated, audit-friendly releases. It’s a “gold standard” where the panel is used for host hygiene and visibility, Docker CLI/Compose plus Git are the source of truth, and CI/CD pipelines deploy headlessly across environments.

To follow this pattern:

• Host tasks (users, updates, DNS, backups, monitoring) in UI.
• App lifecycle runs through CLI/Compose and lives in Git.
• CI/CD runners call docker build/push and docker compose up --wait.

Decide who owns :80/:443 and TLS, keep container configuration in code, and never split one responsibility across UI and CLI. That’s how hybrids stay stable.

Conclusion

Use both, but split concerns cleanly:

• Let the control panel own the host (users, firewall, updates, DNS, TLS, backups).
• Let Docker CLI own containers and deployments.

This keeps the host safe and observable in the UI while your app stack remains reproducible across laptops, CI runners, and servers.

Why does this pair well with is*hosting? You can choose a KVM NVMe VPS or a dedicated server, add (or skip) a panel at checkout — ispmanager, DirectAdmin, HestiaCP, aaPanel, FastPanel, or cPanel — and still keep full root access for Docker.