Deploying containers with Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm is Docker's solution to clustering multiple Docker engines into one cluster. If your organization is heavily reliant on Docker and Docker containers, it might be worth looking at Docker Swarm. When you have several Docker installations that you maintain on separate Docker hosts, then these Docker hosts will be grouped together as a cluster using Docker Swarm. Docker Swarm brings in a whole lot of features that will help manage your apps on a Swarm cluster. Another great advantage of using Docker Swarm is that since it uses the Docker API, working with a Swarm cluster is no different than working with a Docker daemon. So tools such as Shipyard still continue to work with Docker Swarm. We will look at Shipyard later in this recipe.

Getting ready

At this moment, the easiest way to orchestrate a Docker Swarm cluster locally is by using docker-machine instances. Before you start the Docker Swarm cluster, let's familiarize ourselves with some concepts...