Docker Swarm management: Rancher, Shipyard, Portainer or other?

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Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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Rancher all the way.
My setup is
Rancher cluster on top of 4 to 6 Ubuntu 16.04 VM on top of Proxmox cluster.

By using
Proxmox cli qm to deploy all the Ubuntu VMs, then Ansible to update , upgrade VMs, install docker, finally Rancher.
Start to finish , may be 5 min to 10min ( just enough time to boil water for a cup of coffee )
 
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Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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One more point,
With Rancher, you have choices and support : Cattle, Swarm , Kubernetes orchestration.
I played with Swarm and Kubernetes on top of Rancher in the very early days but had not re-visited since Rancher went GA.
It only takes few minutes ( few clicks ) to switch from Cattle to Swarm or Kubernetes.

I just settled on Rancher's Cattle orchestration for now.
 
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Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I have been leaning Rancher, but I like the idea of using the native Docker Engine and swarm mode. I think you still cannot import existing swarms into Rancher. Not a huge deal since it is not setup but wondering if that is a safer way to go. I was using flocker but that seems less exciting now.
 

nitrobass24

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I have been spending most of my Saturday trying to get Rancher running on PhotonOS...quite frustrating.
 

Marsh

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I had spent countless hours to work with the stripped down"OS that build for docker" i.e. CoreOS , RancherOS.
find out space in the wrong place in yml file would mean waste many hours.

In the end, I found a solution that worked for my lab , run docker on a full Ubuntu VM , manage by Ansible, on top of Proxmox for ease of snapshot , backup, and cloning.

Someday, I still wanting to make tiny OS auto deploy and fully configured to run docker.
 
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Patrick

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Just fired up Portainer on the 4-node Swarm I used for the Docker Swarm Monero Mining:

90 seconds later I can see all my services and all of the different nodes. That is very cool for basic management

upload_2017-1-30_13-14-17.png

You can even run it to manage the local node by using:
Code:
docker run -d -p 9000:9000 -v "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock" portainer/portainer
 
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Marsh

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Within the new Rancher v1.5.0 , you have option to us Portainer as your Swarm dashboard GUI
 

eroji

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Dec 1, 2015
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Portainer is quite nice and lightweight. Easy to install and works for standalone hosts, which is what I am using in my lab. However, I find it that it is limited in terms of what you can configure for creating containers and often time I need to hop onto the server to run them via command instead. The limitation seems to be that it interacts with the Docker API, which has deprecated an array of options otherwise available via CLI.

I have not yet tried Rancher or Shipyard. After some quick read up on them, they seem to be more focused on swarm based configuration, although Portainer can handle that too. Do guys typically run swarm setups in their labs?
 

nitrobass24

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For me moving to Swarm Mode would be a requirement. My biggest hangup with Portainers Swarm Management is that I cannot launch services from there and still need to drop to the CLI.
 

eroji

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I am trying out Rancher after reading the article, and I am having some trouble understanding why after I add the host to Rancher, and enable Access Control via AD, the second user I login with does not see the host I added and is prompted to add the host again? Does this mean that each user, to be able to manage a specific host will need to run the authorization docker command once?
 
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msvirtualguy

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Jan 23, 2013
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I just setup Portainer on my Nutanix CE Cluster, just one Docker Host right now. The only thing i'm having issues with is provisioning Docker Volumes using our DVP, still have to create them manually from the Docker Host but his works with DDC.

Definitely like Portainer for ease of setup and usability, goes right along with our Nutanix story. Just need to figure out how I can get our plugin working for persistent Volume creation.
 

nitrobass24

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@nitrobass24 what are you trying to do? I ran into that a lot early on but then realized it was somewhere I was not looking.
Not sure what I am doing wrong, but when I go into 'Services' in Portainer and attempt to add a service, nothing happens.

I fill out the details, click "Create Service" button. I get a notification that says "service created". But it's not.

Code:
[root@CentOS-Docker2 stephen]# docker service ls
ID            NAME       MODE        REPLICAS  IMAGE
e7oq9218rrjj  portainer  replicated  1/1       portainer/portainer:latest
Starting it from the CLI works fine
Code:
docker service create \
-p 6789:6789 \
--mount type=bind,dst=/data,src=/mnt/docker/nzbget/ \
--mount type=bind,dst=/downloads,src=/mnt/download_temp/ \
linuxserver/nzbget
 
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fatiha

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May 22, 2018
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hi i have a question about this : -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock i couldn't undrestand what's this parametre for,and why do we need it,
another question is that can i use -v instead of --mount type=volume when i creat a portainer service ??
 

RandomChance

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Jun 11, 2016
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Yeah, I con't really argue against that, I just wish I didn't have to have the Linux master node - my work env is 100% windows, and air-gapped to boot. Running a go program like nomad is so much easier lol.
 
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Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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The new 100GbE to 50GbE cables just came in for a small Kubernetes cluster we are setting up for the next generation of this.
 
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