Experimental: Networking and Services

In this feature:

  • network and service become first class objects in the Docker UI
    • one can now create networks, publish services on that network and attach containers to the services
  • Native multi-host networking
    • network and service objects are globally significant and provides multi-host container connectivity natively
  • Inbuilt simple Service Discovery
    • With multi-host networking and top-level service object, Docker now provides out of the box simple Service Discovery for containers running in a network
  • Batteries included but removable
    • Docker provides inbuilt native multi-host networking by default & can be swapped by any remote driver provided by external plugins.

This is an experimental feature. For information on installing and using experimental features, see the experimental feature overview.

Using Networks

    Usage: docker network [OPTIONS] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [arg...]

    Commands:
        create                   Create a network
        rm                       Remove a network
        ls                       List all networks
        info                     Display information of a network

    Run 'docker network COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

      --help=false       Print usage

The docker network command is used to manage Networks.

To create a network, docker network create foo. You can also specify a driver if you have loaded a networking plugin e.g docker network create -d <plugin_name> foo

    $ docker network create foo
    aae601f43744bc1f57c515a16c8c7c4989a2cad577978a32e6910b799a6bccf6
    $ docker network create -d overlay bar
    d9989793e2f5fe400a58ef77f706d03f668219688ee989ea68ea78b990fa2406

docker network ls is used to display the currently configured networks

    $ docker network ls
    NETWORK ID          NAME                TYPE
    d367e613ff7f        none                null
    bd61375b6993        host                host
    cc455abccfeb        bridge              bridge
    aae601f43744        foo                 bridge
    d9989793e2f5        bar                 overlay

To get detailed information on a network, you can use the docker network info command.

    $ docker network info foo
    Network Id: aae601f43744bc1f57c515a16c8c7c4989a2cad577978a32e6910b799a6bccf6
    Name: foo
    Type: null

If you no longer have need of a network, you can delete it with docker network rm

    $ docker network rm bar
    bar
    $ docker network ls
    NETWORK ID          NAME                TYPE
    aae601f43744        foo                 bridge
    d367e613ff7f        none                null
    bd61375b6993        host                host
    cc455abccfeb        bridge              bridge

User-Defined default network

Docker daemon supports a configuration flag --default-network which takes configuration value of format DRIVER:NETWORK, where, DRIVER represents the in-built drivers such as bridge, overlay, container, host and none. or Remote drivers via Network Plugins. NETWORK is the name of the network created using the docker network create command When a container is created and if the network mode (--net) is not specified, then this default network will be used to connect the container. If --default-network is not specified, the default network will be the bridge driver. Example : docker -d --default-network=overlay:multihost

Using Services

    Usage: docker service COMMAND [OPTIONS] [arg...]

    Commands:
        publish   Publish a service
        unpublish Remove a service
        attach    Attach a backend (container) to the service
        detach    Detach the backend from the service
        ls        Lists all services
        info      Display information about a service

    Run 'docker service COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

      --help=false       Print usage

Assuming we want to publish a service from container a0ebc12d3e48 on network foo as my-service we would use the following command:

    $ docker service publish my-service.foo
    ec56fd74717d00f968c26675c9a77707e49ae64b8e54832ebf78888eb116e428
    $ docker service attach a0ebc12d3e48 my-service.foo

This would make the container a0ebc12d3e48 accessible as my-service on network foo. Any other container in network foo can use DNS to resolve the address of my-service

This can also be acheived by using the --publish-service flag for docker run:

    docker run -itd --publish-service db.foo postgres

db.foo in this instance means “place the container on network foo, and allow other hosts on foo to discover it under the name db”

We can see the current services using the docker service ls command

    $ docker service ls
    SERVICE ID          NAME                NETWORK             PROVIDER
    ec56fd74717d        my-service          foo                 a0ebc12d3e48

To remove the a service:

    $ docker service detach a0ebc12d3e48 my-service.foo
    $ docker service unpublish my-service.foo

Native Multi-host networking

There is a lot to talk about the native multi-host networking and the overlay driver that makes it happen. The technical details are documented under https://github.com/docker/libnetwork/blob/master/docs/overlay.md. Using the above experimental UI docker network, docker service and --publish-service, the user can exercise the power of multi-host networking.

Since network and service objects are globally significant, this feature requires distributed states provided by the libkv project. Using libkv, the user can plug any of the supported Key-Value store (such as consul, etcd or zookeeper). User can specify the Key-Value store of choice using the --kv-store daemon flag, which takes configuration value of format PROVIDER:URL, where PROVIDER is the name of the Key-Value store (such as consul, etcd or zookeeper) and URL is the url to reach the Key-Value store. Example : docker -d --kv-store=consul:localhost:8500

Send us feedback and comments on #14083 or on the usual Google Groups (docker-user, docker-dev) and IRC channels.