Docker swarm cluster in AWS

Containers, containers, containers everywhere!

During the last year, I’ve been talking and showing docker containers. However, because of possible network issues (speed, firewall, latency, etc) in some places, I prefer to run my docker host (daemon) in the cloud. To make that possible, I use Docker Machine which contains drivers for many cloud providers like Amazon, Azure, GCE, VirtualBox, etc. Since I’ve been using AWS for while and docker-machine has a driver for it, the use of AWS to run a docker daemon seems a good choice.

As I’ve told in a previous post, I have an existing test environment that I use to explore and show different container’s tools and platforms (docker, docker-compose, swarm, kubernetes, openshift, etc). This environment allows me to simulate docker networks and scaling. To be able to simulate multi-host docker containers, I need to have multiple hosts. For simple scenarios and to show a docker container environment, the use of docker-swarm + docker-compose running in AWS seems to be fair enough.

If you want to try docker swarm in AWS, I recorded the following screencast that guides you through the steps to run it. For a production-ready container based platform, I use and suggest OpenShift Enterprise v3.

I hope this information is useful for you.