As the buzz around Docker Machine starts to ramp up, Docker this week released a beta version for download inviting the community to provide feedback as Machine moves towards a production release. Peter Ericson included Docker Machine and Docker Swarm in his presentation at the February Sydney Docker Meetup on creating a Docker cluster whilst Docker’s very own Ben Firshman, who has been knee deep with flying the flag for Machine, Swarm and Compose will be speaking at the Docker Online Meetup on March 3rd with live Q&A.
Docker aims to solve one of the niggles with orchestration of machines and the guys from Docker explain Machine as a way to get from zero to Docker instantly. Usually having a machine that cannot run containers can mean jumping through hoops to get Docker set up and the problem which Docker solves is how you get to that state where you have Docker up and running by avoiding a convoluted process.
Usually, to use Docker you will need to have a manually set up Docker daemon running which can be awkward especially if you want to get it set up in the cloud where you might have had to set up an EC2 instance and go through logging into that server or connect a Docker client to the daemon.
Firshman explains how simple machine is to setup, “Machine create is a single command that creates a Docker hosts on demand which starts running Docker commands on your local machine that point to the VM you’ve created by setting up an encrypted and authenticated connection between the Docker commands on your local machine and the server that you’ve created which means you can run the Docker commands on your laptop as if you were controlling a local Docker instance” and this demo Firshman runs through a demo of intergrating Machine, Swarm and Compose.
