How to scale Docker containers in production

Question

So I recently discovered this awesome tool  and it says      Docker is an open-source project to easily create lightweight    portable  self-sufficient containers from any application  The same   container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at   scale  in production  on VMs  bare metal  OpenStack clusters  public   clouds and more    Let s say I have a docker image which runs Nginx and a website connects to external database  How do I scale the container in production

User · Accepted Answer

Update  2019-03-11  First of all thanks for those who have upvoted this answer over the years   Please be aware that this question was asked in August 2013  when Docker was still a very new technology  Since then  Kubernetes was launched on June 2014  Docker swarm was integrated into the Docker engine in Feb 2015  Amazon launched it s container solution  ECS  in April 2015 and Google launched GKE in August 2015  It s fair to say the production container landscape has changed substantially     The short answer is that you d have to write your own logic to do this   I would expect this kind of feature to emerge from the following projects  built on top of docker  and designed to support applications in production    flynn deis coreos Mesos   Update 1  Another related project I recently discovered    maestro   Update 2  The latest release Openstack contains support for managing Docker containers    Docker Openstack Paas zone within OpenStack   Update 3  System for managing Docker instances   Shipyard   And a presentation on how to use tools like Packer  Docker and Serf to deliver an immutable server infrastructure pattern   FutureOps with Immutable Infrastructure Slides   Update 4  A neat article on how to wire together docker containers using serf    Decentralizing Docker  How to use serf with Docker   Update 5  Run Docker on Mesos using the Marathon framework  Mesosphere Docker Developer Tutorial  Update 6  Run Docker on Tsuru as it supports docker-cluster and segregated scheduler deploy   http   blog tsuru io 2014 04 04 running-tsuru-in-production-scaling-and-segregating-docker-containers    Update 7  Docker-based environments orchestration  maestro-ng  Update 8  decking io  Update 9  Google kubernetes  Update 10  Redhat have refactored their openshift PAAS to integrate Docker   Project Atomic Geard   Update 11  A Docker NodeJS lib wrapping the Docker command line and managing it from a json file    docker-cmd   Update 12  Amazon s new container service enables scaling in the cluster    Update 13  Strictly speaking Flocker does not  scale  applications  but it is designed to fufil a related function of making stateful containers  running databases services   portable across multiple docker hosts   https   clusterhq com   Update 14  A project to create portable templates that describe Docker applications   http   panamax io   Update 15  The Docker project is now addressing orchestration natively  See announcement    Docker machine Docker swarm Docker compose   Update 16  Spotify Helios  See also    https   blog docker com tag helios    Update 17  The Openstack project now has a new  container as a service  project called Magnum    https   wiki openstack org wiki Magnum   Shows a lot of promise  enables the easy setup of Docker orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes and Docker swarm   Update 18  Rancher is a project that is maturing rapidly  http   rancher com   Nice UI and strong focus on hyrbrid Docker infrastructures  Update 19  The Lattice project is an offshoot of Cloud Foundry for managing container clusters    Update 20  Docker recently bought Tutum   https   www docker com tutum  Update 21  Package manager for applications deployed on Kubernetes   http   helm sh   Update 22  Vamp is an open source and self-hosted platform for managing  micro service oriented architectures that rely on container technology    http   vamp io   Update 23  A Distributed  Highly Available  Datacenter-Aware Scheduler   https   www nomadproject io    From the guys that gave us Vagrant and other powerful tools   Update 24  Container hosting solution for AWS  open source and based on Kubernetes  https   supergiant io   Update 25  Apache Mesos based container hosted located in Germany  https   sloppy io features  features  And Docker Inc  also provide a container hosting service called Docker cloud  https   cloud docker com   Update 26  Jelastic is a hosted PAAS service that scales containers automatically

User · Answer

Have a look at Rancher com - it can manage multiple Docker hosts and much more

User · Answer

Openshift guys also created a project  You can find more information here  try test container and detailed info here   The only problem is the solution is Redhat centric for now

User · Answer

One option not mentioned in other posts is Helios  It is built by spotify and does not try to do too much   https   github com spotify helios

User · Answer

Take a look also at etcd and Consul

User · Answer

A sensible approach to scaling Docker could be    Each service will be a docker container Intra container service discovery managed through links  new feature from docker 0 6 5  Containers will be deployed through Dokku Applications will be managed through Shipyard which in its turn is using hipache   Another docker open sourced project from Yandex    cocaine

User · Answer

You can try Tsuru  Tsuru is a opensource PaaS inspired in Heroku  and it is already with some products in production at Globo com internet arm of the biggest Broadcast Television Company in Brazil   It manages the entire flow of an application  since the container creation  deploy  routing with hipache  with many nice features as docker cluster  scaling of units  segregated deploy  etc   Take a look in our documentation bellow  http   docs tsuru io   Here our post covering our environment  http   blog tsuru io 2014 04 04 running-tsuru-in-production-scaling-and-segregating-docker-containers

User · Answer

Deis automates scaling of Docker containers  among other things    Deis  pronounced DAY-iss  is an open source PaaS that makes it easy to deploy and manage applications on your own servers  Deis builds upon Docker and CoreOS to provide a lightweight PaaS with a Heroku-inspired workflow   Here is the developer workflow   deis create myapp                        create a new deis app called  myapp  git push deis master                     built with a buildpack or dockerfile deis scale web 16 worker 4               scale up docker containers   Deis automatically deploys your Docker containers across a CoreOS cluster and configures the Nginx routers to route requests to healthy Docker containers   If a host dies  containers are automatically restarted on another host in seconds   Just browse to the proxy URL or use deis open to hit your app   Some other useful commands   deis config set DATABASE URL             attach to a database w  an envvar deis run make test                       run ephemeral containers for one-off tasks deis logs                                get aggregated logs for troubleshooting deis rollback v23                        rollback to a prior release   To see this in action  check out the terminal video at http   deis io overview    You can also learn about Deis concepts or jump right into deploying your own private PaaS

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Panamax  Docker Management for Humans  panamax io  Fig  Fast  isolated development environments using Docker  fig sh

User · Answer

While we re big fans of Deis  deis io  and are actively deploying to it  there are other Heroku like PaaS style deployment solutions out there  including   Longshoreman from the Wayfinder folks   https   github com longshoreman longshoreman  Decker from the CloudCredo folks  using CloudFoundry   http   www cloudcredo com decker-docker-cloud-foundry   As for straight up orchestration  NewRelic s opensource Centurion project seems quite promising   https   github com newrelic centurion

[scale] How to scale Docker containers in production

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