As part of our exploration of containers on metal, the RackN team has created a workload on top of OpenCrowbar as the foundation for a Docker Swarm on bare metal cluster.  This provides a second more integrated and automated path to Docker Clusters than the Docker Machine driver we posted last month.

It’s really pretty simple: The workload does the work to deliver an integrated physical system (Centos 7.1 right now) that has Docker installed and running.  Then we build a Consul cluster to track the to-be-created Swarm.  As new nodes are added into the cluster, they register into Consul and then get added into the Docker Swarm cluster.  If you reset or repurpose a node, Swarm will automatically time out of the missing node so scaling up and down is pretty seamless.

When building the cluster, you have the option to pick which machines are masters for the swarm.  Once the cluster is built, you just use the Docker CLI’s -H option against the chosen master node on the configured port (defaults to port 2475).

This work is intended as a foundation for more complex Swarm and/or non-Docker Container Orchestration deployments.  Future additions include allowing multiple network and remote storage options.

You don’t need metal to run a quick test of this capability.  You can test drive RackN OpenCrowbar using virtual machines and then expand to the full metal experience when you are ready.

Contact info@rackn.com for access to the Docker Swarm trial.   For now, we’re managing the subscriber base for the workload.  OpenCrowbar is a pre-req and ungated.  We’re excited to give access to the code – just ask.