Remote Docker Host

A virtual machine that can be used as a remote docker host for development within a local network.

Introduction

What

This projects provisions a Debian 11 with the latest Docker and exposes the Docker service on port 2375.

Caution: This project is ONLY intended for local development purposes. The Docker service is completely exposed!

Why

Use Case 1 - Outsourcing Compute

If the machine you are developing on is not beefy enough to run all docker containers you can offload work. Simply start this project on another machine within your network and use it from your local docker CLI!

Use Case 2 - WSL 1 and Docker

If you do not want to install the WSL 2 and Hyper-V on your Windows machine you can just install the latest docker-ce-cli package in a UNIX distribution within your WSL 1 and bind it to the Docker service running in the virtual machine.

Hint: Think poor VirtualBox support for Hyper-V.

Use Case 3 - Sandboxing

You are experimenting and do not want to clutter your local system with images and containers. Simply clutter the virtual machine and throw it away afterwards ;D

Installation

Install Git, VirtualBox and Vagrant

Download and install the latest version in that order from:

Clone remote_docker_host from GitHub

Clone the remote_docker_host repository to a nice place on your machine via:

git clone git@github.com:countzero/remote_docker_host.git

Create and provision the virtual machine

Fire up your console at the location you cloned the remote_docker_host repository to and create the virtual machine remote-docker-host with:

vagrant up

Install local docker CLI

Make sure you have the latest docker CLI tool locally installed.

Hint: You don't need to fully instally docker on your local machine. You only need the CLI package!

Configure local docker CLI

We are using the context feature of Docker to simply switch between Docker hosts. Execute the following to create a new context named 'remote' that points to the created virtual machine remote-docker-host:

docker context create remote \
    --default-stack-orchestrator=swarm \
    --docker host=tcp://10.0.0.50:2375 \
    --description "Remote docker host environment in a VM"

Hint: If the virtual machine remote-docker-host is running on another machine in your local area network simply modify the above IP 10.0.0.50 to the IP of that machine. Vagrant is configured to forward the port 2375 to the host machine that runs the virtual machine.

Usage

Start up the virtual machine

Make sure the virtual machine remote-docker-host is running with:

vagrant up

Change the local docker context

Change the docker context to the 'remote' by executing:

docker context use remote

Use the docker CLI as ususal

Now you can simply use all docker commands and they will get executed on the remote Docker host.