Ljubljana, Slovenia

Swarm

Tue, May 2, 2017

Auto-scaling a Docker Swarm

Setting up a Docker Swarm (“docker swarm mode” if you want to be more accurate), is pretty much a trivial process. You need 3 nodes, create a swarm on one of them and join the other two nodes to the swarm. Simple. What if you wanted a 100 swarm nodes? How fast can you provision new nodes to scale up your Docker Swarm?

Setting up your own Docker swarm

Scaling your service has usually been in the domain of system operators, which installed servers and developers tweaking software when the load got high enough to warrant scaling. Soon enough you’d be looking at tens or even hundreds of instances which took a lot of time to manage. With the release of Docker 1.12, you now have orchestration built in - you can scale to as many instances as your hosts can allow. And setting up a docker swarm is easy-peasy.