Category Archives: Docker

Building A Self-Sufficient Docker Cluster

A self-sufficient system is a system capable of healing and adaptation. Healing means that the cluster will always be in the designed state. As an example, if a replica of a service goes down, the system needs to bring it back up again. Adaptation, on the other hand, is about modifications of the desired state so that the system can deal with changed conditions. A simple example would be increased traffic. When it happens, services need to be scaled up. When healing and adaptation are automated, we get self-healing and self-adaptation. Together, they both a self-sufficient system that can operate without human intervention.

How does a self-sufficient system look? What are its principal parts? Who are the actors?
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The DevOps Toolkit Series Continues: 2.2 Is Born

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The third installment in The DevOps Toolkit Series is public! Even though, while I’m writing this post, only 20% of The DevOps 2.2 Toolkit: Self-Healing Clusters is finished, I hope you’ll pick it up and send me your feedback. I need your help in setting the direction of the book. I need you to help me shape it into something great. I need you to help me make this book a community effort.

Please get it from leanpub.com/the-devops-2-2-toolkit. I’m waiting for your feedback.

What follows is the preface to The DevOps 2.2 Toolkit: Self-Healing Clusters book.
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Automating Jenkins Docker Setup

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Jenkins is, by far, the most used CI/CD tool in the market. That comes as no surprise since it’s been around for a while, it has one of the biggest open source communities, it has enterprise version for those who need it, and it is straightforward to extend it to suit (almost) anyone’s needs.

Products that dominate the market for years tend to be stable and very feature rich. Jenkins is no exception. However, with age come some downsides as well. In the case of Jenkins, automation setup is one of the things that has a lot to be desired. If you need Jenkins to serve as an orchestrator of your automation and tasks, you’ll find it to be effortless to use. But, if you need to automate Jenkins itself, you’ll realize that it is not as smooth as you’d expect from modern tools. Never the less, Jenkins setup can be automated, and we’ll go through one possible solution.
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Managing Secrets In Docker Swarm Clusters

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Docker 1.13 introduced a set of features that allow us to centrally manage secrets and pass them only to services that need them. They provide a much-needed mechanism to provide information that should be hidden from anyone except designated services.

A secret (at least from Docker’s point of view) is a blog of data. A typical use case would be a certificate, SSH private keys, passwords, and so on. Secrets should stay secret meaning that they should not be stored unencrypted or transmitted over a network.
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Blue-Green Deployments With Docker Services Running Inside a Swarm Cluster

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I am continuously getting questions about blue-green releases inside a Docker Swarm cluster. Viktor, in your The DevOps 2.0 Toolkit book you told us to use blue-green deployment. How do we do it with services running inside a Swarm cluster? My answer is usually something along the following lines. With the old Swarm, blue-green releases were easier than rolling updates (neither were supported out of the box). Now we got rolling updates. Use them! The reaction to that is often that we still want blue-green releases.

This post is my brainstorming on this subject. I did not write it as a result of some deep thinking. There is no great wisdom in it. I just wrote what was passing through my mind while I was trying to answer another one of the emails containing blue-green deployment questions. What follows might not make much sense. Don’t be harsh on me.
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Using Docker Stack And Compose YAML Files To Deploy Swarm Services

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Bells are ringing! Docker v1.13 is out!

The most common question I receive during my Docker-related talks and workshops is usually related to Swarm and Compose.

Someone: How can I use Docker Compose with Docker Swarm?

Me: You can’t! You can convert your Compose files into a Bundle that does not support all Swarm features. If you want to use Swarm to its fullest, be prepared for docker service create commands that contain a never ending list of arguments.
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It’s alive! The DevOps 2.1 Toolkit: Docker Swarm Is Finished

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I published The DevOps 2.1 Toolkit: Docker Swarm on LeanPub early. I think that only around 20% was written when it went public. That allowed you to get early access to the material, and me to get your feedback. The result is fantastic. Many send me their notes, reported bugs, proposed suggestions for improvements, recommended tools and processes that should be explored, and so on.
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