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Prerequisites & Setup

Before you can drive the sandbox lifecycle, you need to be on the sandbox-based version of Docker Offload and have a working docker-cloud context.

Prerequisites

  • Docker Desktop 4.97 or later. The persistent-sandbox lifecycle (docker offload create / stop / rm) landed in this release.
  • A Docker Agentic Platform subscription (new accounts include complimentary credits).
  • An active Docker login - run docker login if you're not signed in.
  • Unrestricted internet connectivity to Docker Cloud (corporate proxies/firewalls can block the encrypted tunnel).

Disable the old 'Enable Docker Offload' toggle

The current sandbox-based Offload is not the legacy v1 feature. In Docker Desktop → Settings, make sure the old "Enable Docker Offload" beta toggle is off. If it's on, you're on v1 and the docker offload create lifecycle commands won't behave as described here.

Confirm the CLI

docker offload --help

You should see the lifecycle subcommands:

Usage:  docker offload COMMAND

Commands:
  create     Create (or connect to) a cloud sandbox
  status     Show the status of the cloud sandbox
  stop       Pause the cloud sandbox
  rm         Delete the cloud sandbox
  ...

Create your sandbox for the workshop

Create a sandbox with sensible defaults. This also switches your active Docker context to docker-cloud:

docker offload create

Verify the context switched:

docker context ls

NAME             DESCRIPTION                               DOCKER ENDPOINT
default          Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration   unix:///var/run/docker.sock
desktop-linux    Docker Desktop                            unix:///...docker.sock
docker-cloud *   docker cloud context                      unix:///...docker-cloud.sock

The * on docker-cloud means subsequent docker commands run in the cloud sandbox.

Confirm you're really on cloud hardware:

docker info | grep -E "(Server Version|Operating System)"

 Server Version: 28.0.2
 Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS

✅ Checkpoint

  • [ ] Docker Desktop is 4.97+ and the legacy Offload toggle is off
  • [ ] docker offload --help lists create, status, stop, rm
  • [ ] docker offload create succeeded and docker-cloud is the active context
  • [ ] docker info reports a cloud server (Ubuntu), not your local OS

Next: Creating & Sizing a Sandbox.

Sources: Docker Offload quickstart and Lifecycle, Idle Timeout & TTL.