Docker 0.5.0: external volumes, advanced networking, self hosted registry

Introducing Docker 0.5.0

Dear Dockers,

Today we are happy to introduce a new release of Docker. In addition to numerous stability and usability fixes, this release adds support for external volumes, advanced networking options, a vastly improved self-hosted registry, and dozens of other improvements.

Contents

• What is Docker?
• 0.5.0 summary
  • External volumes
  • Advanced networking
  • Self-hosted registry
• What's next?
  • Broader kernel support
  • Cross architecture support
  • Even more integrations
  • Plugin API
  • Better documentation
  • Production-ready
• How you can help
• Hack day on July 30

What is Docker?

Docker is an open-source engine which automates the deployment of applications as highly portable, self-sufficient containers.

Docker containers are both hardware-agnostic and platform-agnostic. This means that they can run anywhere, from your laptop to the largest EC2 compute instance and everything in between - and they don't require that you use a particular language, framework or packaging system. That makes them great building blocks for deploying and scaling web apps, databases and backend services without depending on a particular stack or provider.

Docker is an open-source implementation of the deployment engine which powers dotCloud, a popular Platform-as-a-Service. It benefits directly from the experience accumulated over several years of large-scale operation and support of hundreds of thousands of applications and databases.

0.5.0 summary

Externally mounted volumes

In 0.3 we introduced data volumes, a great mechanism for manipulating persistent data such as database files, log files, etc.

In addition to sharing volumes between containers, you can now share volumes between a container and the underlying host. This makes certain scenarios much easier, such as using a high-performance storage backend for your production database, making live development changes available to a container, etc.

You can also mark parts of your container as persistent volumes at build time, by using the VOLUME instruction in your Dockerfile.

Advanced networking

UDP port allocation

Your are now able to allocate UDP port, using /udp and the end of the port specification, example:

• -p 2000/udp
• -p :80/tcp
• -p :8080 #when no protocol specified, assuming tcp

Static public port

When allocating ports for you containers you could use:

• -p 80 to bind the port 80 of the container to a random port on the host
• -p :80 to bind the port 80 of the container to the same port (80) on the host

With 0.5 you can now specify the public port using:

• -p 5000:80 to bind the port 80 of the container to the port 5000 on the host
• -p 800:2000/udp to bind the port 2000 of the container to the port 800 on the host using udp

Self-hosted registry

FIXME: text from Sam

What's next?

Broader kernel support

Our goal is to make Docker run everywhere, but currently Docker requires Linux version 3.8 or higher with lxc and aufs support. If you're deploying new machines for the purpose of running Docker, this is a fairly easy requirement to meet. However, if you're adding Docker to an existing deployment, you may not have the flexibility to update and patch the kernel.

Expanding Docker's kernel support is a priority. This includes running on older kernel versions, but also on kernels with no AUFS support, or with incomplete lxc capabilities.

Cross-architecture support

Our goal is to make Docker run everywhere. However currently Docker only runs on x86_64 systems. We plan on expanding architecture support, so that Docker containers can be created and used on more architectures.

Even more integrations

We want Docker to be the secret ingredient that makes your existing tools more awesome. Thanks to this philosophy, Docker has already been integrated with Puppet, Chef, Openstack Nova, Jenkins, DotCloud sandbox, Pallet, Strider CI and even Heroku buildpacks.

Expect Docker to integrate with even more of your favorite tools going forward, including:

• Alternative storage backends such as ZFS, LVM or BTRFS
• Alternative containerization backends such as OpenVZ, Solaris Zones, BSD Jails and even plain Chroot.
• Process managers like Supervisord, Runit, Gaffer and Systemd
• Build and integration tools like Make, Maven, Scons, Jenkins, Buildbot and Cruise Control.
• Configuration management tools like Puppet, Chef and Salt
• Personal development environments like Vagrant, Boxen, Koding and Cloud9.
• Orchestration tools like Zookeeper, Mesos and Galaxy
• Infrastructure deployment tools like Openstack, Apache Cloudstack, Ganeti

Plugin API

We want Docker to run everywhere, and to integrate with every devops tool. Those are ambitious goals, and the only way to reach them is with the Docker community. For the community to participate fully, we need an API which allows Docker to be deeply and easily customized.

We are working on a plugin API which will make Docker very, very customization-friendly. We believe it will facilitate the integrations listed above - and many more we didn't even think about.

Let us know if you want to start playing with the API before it's generally available. And if you're in the San Francisco area, make sure to drop by our next hack day for a sneak preview!

Better documentation

We believe that great documentation is worth 10 features. We are often told that "Docker's documentation is great for a 2-month old project". Our goal is to make it great, period.

If you have feedback on how to improve our documentation, please get in touch by replying to this email, or by filing an issue. We always appreciate it!

Production-ready

Docker is still alpha software, and not suited for production. We are working hard to get there, and we are confident that it will be possible within a few months.

How you can help

• Contribute! Docker is growing faster than we can keep up! We are looking for volunteers to help improve the various components of the project - everything from documentation, packaging, project infrastructure to plugins and core components. Check out the contribution guidelines as a start.

• Make screencasts and articles. If you do anything cool and useful with docker, record a screencast and tell us about it! This could be dockerizing an application, installing it in a specific environment, cool usage tricks, etc. We recommend ascii.io, it's insanely easy to use.

• Dockerize your favorite tools. Docker plays well with other tools in the devops toolbox. Got a tool you want to integrate with Docker? Create a github issue and we'll help you out.

• Join the conversation. There are insane volumes of interesting conversations going on on irc (#docker@freenode), twitter (#docker) and the google group. Whether you have a beginner question or want to discuss a point of design, never hesitate to speak up!

• And of course all the usual ways of spreading the word - tweets, github follows, etc. etc. are always welcome.

Hack day on July 30

The next Docker hack day is on Tuesday, July 30 at the dotCloud HQ in San Francisco. RSVP now at http://www.meetup.com/Docker-meetups/events/127801022/

Happy hacking! The Docker team