Learn how to track Docker container CPU and memory usage with built-in tools and practical commands — no dedicated SRE required.
Your app slows to a crawl at 2 a.m., and you have no idea which container is eating all the CPU. By morning the problem has vanished, but you're left with zero evidence and a vague sense of dread. If you're running Docker in production without dedicated monitoring, that scenario is only a matter of time. The good news: Docker exposes a surprising amount of resource data out of the box — you just need to know where to look.
The Quickest Starting Point: docker stats
Docker ships with a live stats command that works immediately, no extra software required. Run it and you get a continuously refreshing table of every running container:
docker stats — streams live CPU %, memory usage vs. limit, network I/O, and block I/O for all running containers
