Introducing Docker Swarm

In the last chapter, we introduced orchestrators. Like a conductor in an orchestra, an orchestrator makes sure that all our containerized application services play together nicely and contribute harmoniously to a common goal. Such orchestrators have quite a few responsibilities, which we discussed in detail. Finally, we provided a short overview of the most important container orchestrators on the market.

This chapter introduces Docker’s native orchestrator, SwarmKit. It elaborates on all of the concepts and objects SwarmKit uses to deploy and run distributed, resilient, robust, and highly available applications in a cluster on-premises or in the cloud. This chapter also introduces how SwarmKit ensures secure applications by using a Software-Defined Network (SDN) to isolate containers. We will learn how to create a Docker Swarm locally, in a special environment called Play with Docker (PWD), and in the cloud. Lastly, we will deploy an application...