Question

What is a swarm and how to create a swarm

Answer 1

A swarm consists of multiple Docker hosts which run in swarm mode and act as managers (to manage membership and delegation) and workers (which run swarm services). A given Docker host can be a manager, a worker, or perform both roles. When you create a service, you define its optimal state (number of replicas, network and storage resources available to it, ports the service exposes to the outside world, and more). Docker works to maintain that desired state. For instance, if a worker node becomes unavailable, Docker schedules that node’s tasks on other nodes. A task is a running container which is part of a swarm service and managed by a swarm manager, as opposed to a standalone container.

One of the key advantages of swarm services over standalone containers is that you can modify a service’s configuration, including the networks and volumes it is connected to, without the need to manually restart the service. Docker will update the configuration, stop the service tasks with the out of date configuration, and create new ones matching the desired configuration.

Creating a Swarm :

 In order to create a swarm make sure the Docker Engine daemon is started on the host machines.

• Open a terminal and ssh into the machine where you want to run your manager node. Here we use a machine named manager1. If you use Docker Machine, you can connect to it via SSH using the following command:

$ docker-machine ssh manager1

• Run the following command to create a new swarm:

$ docker swarm init --advertise-addr <MANAGER-IP>

• The following command creates a swarm on the manager1 machine:

$ docker swarm init --advertise-addr 192.168.99.100
Swarm initialized: current node (dxn1zf6l61qsb1josjja83ngz) is now a manager.

To add a worker to this swarm, run the following command:

    docker swarm join \
    --token SWMTKN-1-49nj1cmql0jkz5s954yi3oex3nedyz0fb0xx14ie39trti4wxv-8vxv8rssmk743ojnwacrr2e7c \
    192.168.99.100:2377

To add a manager to this swarm, run 'docker swarm join-token manager' and follow the instructions.

The --advertise-addr flag configures the manager node to publish its address as 192.168.99.100. The other nodes in the swarm must be able to access the manager at the IP address.

The output includes the commands to join new nodes to the swarm. Nodes will join as managers or workers depending on the value for the --token flag.

• Run docker info to view the current state of the swarm:

$ docker info

Containers: 2
Running: 0
Paused: 0
Stopped: 2
  ...snip...
Swarm: active
  NodeID: dxn1zf6l61qsb1josjja83ngz
  Is Manager: true
  Managers: 1
  Nodes: 1
  ...snip...

• Run the docker node ls command to view information about nodes:

$ docker node ls

ID                           HOSTNAME  STATUS  AVAILABILITY  MANAGER STATUS
dxn1zf6l61qsb1josjja83ngz *  manager1  Ready   Active        Leader

The * next to the node ID indicates that you’re currently connected on this node.