Swarm: a Docker-native clustering system

Docker Swarm is native clustering for Docker. It turns a pool of Docker hosts into a single, virtual host.

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Flynn, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Like other Docker projects, Swarm follows the "batteries included but removable" principle. It ships with a set of simple scheduling backends out of the box, and as initial development settles, an API will be developed to enable pluggable backends. The goal is to provide a smooth out-of-the-box experience for simple use cases, and allow swapping in more powerful backends, like Mesos, for large scale production deployments.

Installation for Swarm Users

For installing swarm for using in your environment, use the Docker Swarm documentation on docs.docker.com.

Installation for Swarm Developers

Developers should always download and install from source rather than using the Docker image.

Prerequisites

Beginning with Swarm 0.4 golang 1.4.x or later is required for building Swarm. Refer to the Go installation page to download and install the golang 1.4.x or later package.

Note: On Ubuntu 14.04, the apt-get repositories install golang 1.2.1 version by default. So, do not use apt-get but install golang 1.4.x manually using the instructions provided on the Go site.

Install Git.
Install godep.

Clone and build Swarm

Note GOPATH should be set when install godep in above step.

Install the swarm binary in the $GOPATH/bin directory. An easy way to do this is using the go get command.

$ go get github.com/docker/swarm

You can also do this manually using the following commands:

$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/docker/
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/docker/
$ git clone https://github.com/docker/swarm
$ cd swarm
$ $GOPATH/bin/godep go install .

Then you can find the swarm binary under $GOPATH/bin.

From here, you can follow the instructions in the main documentation, replacing docker run swarm with just swarm.

Participating

You can contribute to Docker Swarm in several different ways:

If you have comments, questions, or want to use your knowledge to help others, come join the conversation on IRC. You can reach us at #docker-swarm on Freenode.
To report a problem or request a feature, please file an issue.
Of course, we welcome pull requests and patches. For information on making feature requests, follow the process suggested here.

Finally, if you want to see what we have for the future and learn more about our release cycles, all this information is detailed on the wiki

Copyright and license

Docs released under Creative commons.