Overview of Docker Cluster

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

This topic applies to Docker Enterprise.

The Docker Enterprise platform business, including products, customers, and employees, has been acquired by Mirantis, inc., effective 13-November-2019. For more information on the acquisition and how it may affect you and your business, refer to the Docker Enterprise Customer FAQ.

Docker Cluster is a tool for lifecycle management of Docker clusters. With Cluster, you use a YAML file to configure your provider’s resources. Then, with a single command, you provision and install all the resources from your configuration.

Using Docker Cluster is a three-step process:

  1. Ensure you have the credentials necessary to provision a cluster.

  2. Define the resources that make up your cluster in cluster.yml

  3. Run docker cluster create to have Cluster provision resources and install Docker Enterprise on the resources.

A cluster.yml file resembles the following example:

variable:
  region: us-east-2
  ucp_password:
    type: prompt

provider:
  aws:
    region: ${region}

cluster:
  engine:
    version: "ee-stable-18.09.5"
  ucp:
    version: "docker/ucp:3.1.6"
    username: "admin"
    password: ${ucp_password}

resource:
  aws_instance:
    managers:
       quantity: 1

For more information about Cluster files, refer to the Cluster file reference.

Docker Cluster has commands for managing the whole lifecycle of your cluster:

  • Create and destroy clusters
  • Scale up or scale down clusters
  • Upgrade clusters
  • View the status of clusters
  • Backup and restore clusters

Export Docker Cluster artifacts

You can export both Terraform and Ansible scripts to deploy certain components standalone or with custom configurations. Use the following commands to export those scripts:

docker container run --detach --name dci --entrypoint sh docker/cluster:latest
docker container cp dci:/cluster/terraform terraform
docker container cp dci:/cluster/ansible ansible
docker container stop dci
docker container rm dci

Where to go next

documentation, docs, docker, cluster, infrastructure, automation