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I wish that Ansible would work with orchestrating Docker containers. Here's my thought - Docker is replacing the use case for using Ansible/Chef/Puppet for a l

I wish that Ansible would work with orchestrating Docker containers. Here's my thought - Docker is replacing the use case for using Ansible/Chef/Puppet for a lot of people. It is far too easy to build portable docker machines and deploy them on bare metal. For me, the use case of provisioning a softlayer server and then setting it up using Ansible/Chef is no longer present. However, the problem of orchestrating a bunch of Docker machines is still unsolved. I was hoping that Fig would solve it, but by their own admission [1], Fig is going to be closely tied to Orchardup and not intended for general use. So, if I want to launch a hadoop cluster over 20 Docker VMs, physically hosted in 5 different servers... I really have no way today. Notice, that the complexity includes setting up bind-volume mapping, logging, passing of variables from one Docker VM to another, etc. I'm not sure if Chef is more suited to this, given that Octohost moved from Ansible to chef for a Docker PAAS [2], but I would definitely love for Ansible to do this part really well ! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075705 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086092

stonith 12y ago
You might be interested in the Openstack deployment tooling called 'tripleo'[1] which has similar questions and has avoided all the current config management tools. The general gist is that what you're describing can be done using tools like Cloudformation/Heat or the newly minted Terraform, since they can both orchestrate the hardware/cloud resources and pass data in/out of the guests. [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TripleO https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TripleO
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  thanks for this - but it looks to be tied to openstack, while I'm looking for something that leverages docker
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  thanks for this - but it looks to be tied to openstack, while I'm looking for something that leverages docker
wernerb 12y ago
Fleet part of CoreOS does orchestration by leveraging systemd. I am actually working on stateless deployment of interdependent docker containers by pushing docker state to VMs much like Ansible.
mpdehaan2 12y ago
Yep, it does to a great degree now - read http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and-building-docker-with-ansible http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and-buildi... and can also be used to deploy containers. As various "clouds" for Docker spawn up the various cloud modules will also be able to talk to these things.
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  thanks for this. this is great, but could you build a more sophisticated example with port mapping, volume bind mapping and passing of variables to containers? if you look at a fairly trivial fig.yml, you'll know what I mean. This is what enables a fairly common usecase (e.g. wordpress docker -> mysql docker) to be setup fairly quickly.
mdasen 12y ago
You might want to look into Apache Mesos. I don't know it it works with Docker specifically, but it does manage Linux containers (which Docker is based upon).
- mpdehaan2 12y ago
  Here's an article on eBay using this for Ansible based on what twitter was doing - https://github.com/search?q=stars%3A%3E1&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l= https://github.com/search?q=stars%3A%3E1&type=Repositories&r...
carlivar 12y ago
"the problem of orchestrating a bunch of Docker machines is still unsolved." I don't know about that. Mesos was already mentioned: http://mesos.apache.org/ http://mesos.apache.org/ There's also Kubernetes which has recently started working on Fedora and CoreOS: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes And there is CoreOS's fleet system, although this is more low level and would still need orchestration: https://github.com/coreos/fleet https://github.com/coreos/fleet
- ryan_lane 12y ago
  Kubernetes is built using SaltStack :)
  - sandGorgon 12y ago
    interesting ! I didnt know that, but this confirms it - https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/master/DESIGN.md#gce-cluster-configuration https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/maste...
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  True, but they are unviable for most startups. most of the solutions outlined here are very, very heavy. I'm a 2 man startup and really cannot invest into mesos to deploy a 4 VM cluster. But the news that Kubernetes is leveraging SaltStack is hopeful.
scott_karana 12y ago
Wouldn't it still make sense to use a configuration management for automated building of docker containers?

stonith 12y ago

You might be interested in the Openstack deployment tooling called 'tripleo'[1] which has similar questions and has avoided all the current config management tools. The general gist is that what you're describing can be done using tools like Cloudformation/Heat or the newly minted Terraform, since they can both orchestrate the hardware/cloud resources and pass data in/out of the guests. [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TripleO https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TripleO

sandGorgon 12y ago
thanks for this - but it looks to be tied to openstack, while I'm looking for something that leverages docker
sandGorgon 12y ago
thanks for this - but it looks to be tied to openstack, while I'm looking for something that leverages docker

wernerb 12y ago

Fleet part of CoreOS does orchestration by leveraging systemd. I am actually working on stateless deployment of interdependent docker containers by pushing docker state to VMs much like Ansible.

mpdehaan2 12y ago

Yep, it does to a great degree now - read http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and-building-docker-with-ansible http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and-buildi... and can also be used to deploy containers. As various "clouds" for Docker spawn up the various cloud modules will also be able to talk to these things.

sandGorgon 12y ago
thanks for this. this is great, but could you build a more sophisticated example with port mapping, volume bind mapping and passing of variables to containers? if you look at a fairly trivial fig.yml, you'll know what I mean. This is what enables a fairly common usecase (e.g. wordpress docker -> mysql docker) to be setup fairly quickly.

mdasen 12y ago

You might want to look into Apache Mesos. I don't know it it works with Docker specifically, but it does manage Linux containers (which Docker is based upon).

mpdehaan2 12y ago
Here's an article on eBay using this for Ansible based on what twitter was doing - https://github.com/search?q=stars%3A%3E1&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l= https://github.com/search?q=stars%3A%3E1&type=Repositories&r...

carlivar 12y ago

"the problem of orchestrating a bunch of Docker machines is still unsolved." I don't know about that. Mesos was already mentioned: http://mesos.apache.org/ http://mesos.apache.org/ There's also Kubernetes which has recently started working on Fedora and CoreOS: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes And there is CoreOS's fleet system, although this is more low level and would still need orchestration: https://github.com/coreos/fleet https://github.com/coreos/fleet

ryan_lane 12y ago
Kubernetes is built using SaltStack :)
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  interesting ! I didnt know that, but this confirms it - https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/master/DESIGN.md#gce-cluster-configuration https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/maste...
sandGorgon 12y ago
True, but they are unviable for most startups. most of the solutions outlined here are very, very heavy. I'm a 2 man startup and really cannot invest into mesos to deploy a 4 VM cluster. But the news that Kubernetes is leveraging SaltStack is hopeful.

scott_karana 12y ago

Wouldn't it still make sense to use a configuration management for automated building of docker containers?