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layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Drivers: Docker	docs-drivers-docker	The Docker task driver is used to run Docker based tasks.

Docker Driver

Name: docker

The docker driver provides a first-class Docker workflow on Nomad. The Docker driver handles downloading containers, mapping ports, and starting, watching, and cleaning up after containers.

Task Configuration

task "webservice" {
  driver = "docker"

  config {
    image = "redis:3.2"
    labels {
      group = "webservice-cache"
    }
  }
}

The docker driver supports the following configuration in the job spec:

image - The Docker image to run. The image may include a tag or custom URL and should include https:// if required. By default it will be fetched from Docker Hub.
```
config {
  image = "https://hub.docker.internal/redis:3.2"
}
```
load - (Optional) A list of paths to image archive files. If this key is not specified, Nomad assumes the image is hosted on a repository and attempts to pull the image. The artifact blocks can be specified to download each of the archive files. The equivalent of docker load -i path would be run on each of the archive files.
```
artifact {
  source = "http://path.to/redis.tar"
}
config {
  load = ["redis.tar"]
  image = "redis"
}
```
command - (Optional) The command to run when starting the container.
```
config {
  command = "my-command"
}
```
args - (Optional) A list of arguments to the optional command. If no command is specified, the args are passed directly to the container. References to environment variables or any interpretable Nomad variables will be interpreted before launching the task. For example:
```
config {
  args = [
    "-bind", "${NOMAD_PORT_http}",
    "${nomad.datacenter}",
    "${MY_ENV}",
    "${meta.foo}",
  ]
}
```

labels - (Optional) A key-value map of labels to set to the containers on start.

config {
  labels {
    foo = "bar"
    zip = "zap"
  }
}

privileged - (Optional) true or false (default). Privileged mode gives the container access to devices on the host. Note that this also requires the nomad agent and docker daemon to be configured to allow privileged containers.
ipc_mode - (Optional) The IPC mode to be used for the container. The default is none for a private IPC namespace. Other values are host for sharing the host IPC namespace or the name or id of an existing container. Note that it is not possible to refer to Docker containers started by Nomad since their names are not known in advance. Note that setting this option also requires the Nomad agent to be configured to allow privileged containers.
pid_mode - (Optional) host or not set (default). Set to host to share the PID namespace with the host. Note that this also requires the Nomad agent to be configured to allow privileged containers.
uts_mode - (Optional) host or not set (default). Set to host to share the UTS namespace with the host. Note that this also requires the Nomad agent to be configured to allow privileged containers.
userns_mode - (Optional) host or not set (default). Set to host to use the host's user namespace when user namespace remapping is enabled on the docker daemon.
network_mode - (Optional) The network mode to be used for the container. In order to support userspace networking plugins in Docker 1.9 this accepts any value. The default is bridge for all operating systems but Windows, which defaults to nat. Other networking modes may not work without additional configuration on the host (which is outside the scope of Nomad). Valid values pre-docker 1.9 are default, bridge, host, none, or container:name. See below for more details.
hostname - (Optional) The hostname to assign to the container. When launching more than one of a task (using count) with this option set, every container the task starts will have the same hostname.
dns_servers - (Optional) A list of DNS servers for the container to use (e.g. ["8.8.8.8", "8.8.4.4"]). Docker API v1.10 and above only
dns_search_domains - (Optional) A list of DNS search domains for the container to use.
SSL - (Optional) If this is set to true, Nomad uses SSL to talk to the repository. The default value is true.
port_map - (Optional) A key-value map of port labels (see below).
auth - (Optional) Provide authentication for a private registry (see below).
tty - (Optional) true or false (default). Allocate a pseudo-TTY for the container.
interactive - (Optional) true or false (default). Keep STDIN open on the container.
shm_size - (Optional) The size (bytes) of /dev/shm for the container.

logging - (Optional) A key-value map of Docker logging options. The default value is syslog.

config {
  logging {
    type = "fluentd"
    config {
      fluentd-address = "localhost:24224"
    }
  }
}

volumes - (Optional) A list of host_path:container_path strings to bind host paths to container paths. Mounting host paths outside of the alloc directory tasks normally have access to can be disabled on clients by setting the docker.volumes.enabled option set to false.

config {
  volumes = [
    # Use absolute paths to mount arbitrary paths on the host
    "/path/on/host:/path/in/container",

    # Use relative paths to rebind paths already in the allocation dir
    "relative/to/alloc:/also/in/container"
  ]
}

work_dir - (Optional) The working directory inside the container.

Container Name

Nomad creates a container after pulling an image. Containers are named {taskName}-{allocId}. This is necessary in order to place more than one container from the same task on a host (e.g. with count > 1). This also means that each container's name is unique across the cluster.

This is not configurable.

Authentication

If you want to pull from a private repo (for example on dockerhub or quay.io), you will need to specify credentials in your job via the auth option.

The auth object supports the following keys:

username - (Optional) The account username.
password - (Optional) The account password.
email - (Optional) The account email.
server_address - (Optional) The server domain/IP without the protocol. Docker Hub is used by default.

Example:

task "example" {
  driver = "docker"

  config {
    image = "secret/service"

    auth {
      username = "dockerhub_user"
      password = "dockerhub_password"
    }
  }
}

!> Be Careful! At this time these credentials are stored in Nomad in plain text. Secrets management will be added in a later release.

Networking

Docker supports a variety of networking configurations, including using host interfaces, SDNs, etc. Nomad uses bridged networking by default, like Docker.

You can specify other networking options, including custom networking plugins in Docker 1.9. You may need to perform additional configuration on the host in order to make these work. This additional configuration is outside the scope of Nomad.

Allocating Ports

You can allocate ports to your task using the port syntax described on the networking page. Here is a recap:

task "example" {
  driver = "docker"

  resources {
    network {
      port "http" {}
      port "https" {}
    }
  }
}

Forwarding and Exposing Ports

A Docker container typically specifies which port a service will listen on by specifying the EXPOSE directive in the Dockerfile.

Because dynamic ports will not match the ports exposed in your Dockerfile, Nomad will automatically expose all of the ports it allocates to your container.

These ports will be identified via environment variables. For example:

port "http" {}

If Nomad allocates port 23332 to your task for http, 23332 will be automatically exposed and forwarded to your container, and the driver will set an environment variable NOMAD_PORT_http with the value 23332 that you can read inside your container.

This provides an easy way to use the host networking option for better performance.

Using the Port Map

If you prefer to use the traditional port-mapping method, you can specify the port_map option in your job specification. It looks like this:

task "example" {
  driver = "docker"

  config {
    image = "redis"

    port_map {
      redis = 6379
    }
  }

  resources {
    network {
      mbits = 20
      port "redis" {}
    }
  }
}

If Nomad allocates port 23332 to your task, the Docker driver will automatically setup the port mapping from 23332 on the host to 6379 in your container, so it will just work!

Note that by default this only works with bridged networking mode. It may also work with custom networking plugins which implement the same API for expose and port forwarding.

Networking Protocols

The Docker driver configures ports on both the tcp and udp protocols.

This is not configurable.

Other Networking Modes

Some networking modes like container or none will require coordination outside of Nomad. First-class support for these options may be improved later through Nomad plugins or dynamic job configuration.

Client Requirements

Nomad requires Docker to be installed and running on the host alongside the Nomad agent. Nomad was developed against Docker 1.8.2 and 1.9.

By default Nomad communicates with the Docker daemon using the daemon's unix socket. Nomad will need to be able to read/write to this socket. If you do not run Nomad as root, make sure you add the Nomad user to the Docker group so Nomad can communicate with the Docker daemon.

For example, on Ubuntu you can use the usermod command to add the vagrant user to the docker group so you can run Nomad without root:

sudo usermod -G docker -a vagrant

For the best performance and security features you should use recent versions of the Linux Kernel and Docker daemon.

Client Configuration

The docker driver has the following client configuration options:

docker.endpoint - Defaults to unix:///var/run/docker.sock. You will need to customize this if you use a non-standard socket (HTTP or another location).
docker.auth.config - Allows an operator to specify a JSON file which is in the dockercfg format containing authentication information for a private registry.
docker.tls.cert - Path to the server's certificate file (.pem). Specify this along with docker.tls.key and docker.tls.ca to use a TLS client to connect to the docker daemon. docker.endpoint must also be specified or this setting will be ignored.
docker.tls.key - Path to the client's private key (.pem). Specify this along with docker.tls.cert and docker.tls.ca to use a TLS client to connect to the docker daemon. docker.endpoint must also be specified or this setting will be ignored.
docker.tls.ca - Path to the server's CA file (.pem). Specify this along with docker.tls.cert and docker.tls.key to use a TLS client to connect to the docker daemon. docker.endpoint must also be specified or this setting will be ignored.
docker.cleanup.image Defaults to true. Changing this to false will prevent Nomad from removing images from stopped tasks.
docker.volumes.enabled: Defaults to true. Allows tasks to bind host paths (volumes) inside their container. Binding relative paths is always allowed and will be resolved relative to the allocation's directory.
docker.volumes.selinuxlabel: Allows the operator to set a SELinux label to the allocation and task local bind-mounts to containers. If used with docker.volumes.enabled set to false, the labels will still be applied to the standard binds in the container.
docker.privileged.enabled Defaults to false. Changing this to true will allow containers to use privileged mode, which gives the containers full access to the host's devices. Note that you must set a similar setting on the Docker daemon for this to work.

Note: When testing or using the -dev flag you can use DOCKER_HOST, DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY, and DOCKER_CERT_PATH to customize Nomad's behavior. If docker.endpoint is set Nomad will only read client configuration from the config file.

An example is given below:

client {
  options = {
    "docker.cleanup.image" = "false"
  }
}

Client Attributes

The docker driver will set the following client attributes:

driver.docker - This will be set to "1", indicating the driver is available.
driver.docker.version - This will be set to version of the docker server.

Here is an example of using these properties in a job file:

job "docs" {
  # Require docker version higher than 1.2.
  constraint {
    attribute = "${driver.docker.version}"
    operator  = ">"
    version   = "1.2"
  }
}

Resource Isolation

CPU

Nomad limits containers' CPU based on CPU shares. CPU shares allow containers to burst past their CPU limits. CPU limits will only be imposed when there is contention for resources. When the host is under load your process may be throttled to stabilize QOS depending on how many shares it has. You can see how many CPU shares are available to your process by reading NOMAD_CPU_LIMIT. 1000 shares are approximately equal to 1Ghz.

Please keep the implications of CPU shares in mind when you load test workloads on Nomad.

Memory

Nomad limits containers' memory usage based on total virtual memory. This means that containers scheduled by Nomad cannot use swap. This is to ensure that a swappy process does not degrade performance for other workloads on the same host.

Since memory is not an elastic resource, you will need to make sure your container does not exceed the amount of memory allocated to it, or it will be terminated or crash when it tries to malloc. A process can inspect its memory limit by reading NOMAD_MEMORY_LIMIT, but will need to track its own memory usage. Memory limit is expressed in megabytes so 1024 = 1Gb. HIO!!!

IO

Nomad's Docker integration does not currently provide QOS around network or filesystem IO. These will be added in a later release.

Security

Docker provides resource isolation by way of cgroups and namespaces. Containers essentially have a virtual file system all to themselves. If you need a higher degree of isolation between processes for security or other reasons, it is recommended to use full virtualization like QEMU.

Docker For Mac Caveats

Docker For Mac runs docker inside a small VM and then allows access to parts of the host filesystem into that VM. At present, nomad uses a syslog server bound to a unix socket within a path that both the host and the VM can access to forward log messages back to nomad. But at present, Docker For Mac does not work for unix domain sockets (https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/483) in one of these shared paths.

As a result, using nomad with the docker driver on OS X/macOS will work, but no logs will be available to nomad. Users must use the native docker facilities to examine the logs of any jobs running under docker.

In the future, we will resolve this issue, one way or another.

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