Liberate docker-machine setups with dind-machine

docker-machine is an easy to use and powerful tool. Provisioning and setting up cloud server with docker-machine is fast and simple. But it has one major drawback: sharing the server setup is a hassle due to missing configuration options and diverging versions. dind-machine is a docker in docker image for docker-machine which makes docker-machine portable and shareable. Provision machines with dind-machine and share the server configuration and server access easily with others!

Getting Started

There are two ways you can use dind-machine. As an envirnoment inside a docker container or as shell replacement for docker-machine. In both cases you need first to pull the docker image of dind-machine:

docker pull nukapi/dind-machine

Now you can execute the image and use docker-machine inside it. The option -v ~/.dind-machine:/root/.docker/ creates a volume mapping to the path with the docker-machine data. Do not remove it to not lose your docker-machine data! If you start the container without volume mapping, you will loose all certifcates docker-machine creates when you exit the container.

mkdir -p ~/.dind-machine
docker run -it -v ~/.dind-machine:/root/.docker/ nukapi/dind-machine sh -l
docker-machine ls

To use dind-machine as docker-machine replacement you need to set an environment variable DIND_MACHINE_DATA with the path where the docker-machine data should be stored.

mkdir -p ~/.dind-machine
export DIND_MACHINE_DATA=~/.dind-machine
echo  'export DIND_MACHINE_DATA=~/.dind-machine' >> ~/.bashrc

Then define an alias for dind-machine with:

alias dind-machine="docker run -v $DIND_MACHINE_DATA:/root/.docker/ nukapi/dind-machine docker-machine"
echo 'alias dind-machine="docker run -i -t -v $DIND_MACHINE_DATA:/root/.docker/ nukapi/dind-machine docker-machine"' >> ~/.bashrc

Now you can use docker-machine commands with dind-machine by replacing docker-machine with dind-machine. For example

dind-machine ls

Take a look in into the reference

Connecting to the remote docker daemon

You can conveniently connect to your servers docker daemon from your local machine and initialize a docker swarm. :

eval $(dind-machine env myserver --shell zsh) && export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="$DIND_MACHINE_DATA/machine/machines/myserver"

sudo -E docker swarm init
sudo -E docker node ls

Take care of your data!

Backup the dind-machine setup by backing up the folder defined by DIND_MACHINE_DATA. You can also share your machine setup by sharing this folder.