Part 4. Orchestration from a single machine to the cloud

Part 4 covers the essential area of orchestration. As soon as you run any number of containers in the same environment, you’ll need to think about how they’re managed in a consistent and reliable way, so we’ll look at some of the most popular tools currently available.

Chapter 11 explains the significance of orchestration, and builds up from managing Docker based on a single host with systemd to using service discovery on a network with Consul and Registrator.

Chapter 12 moves into clustered Docker environments, where we’ll briefly cover Docker Swarm before going over Kubernetes, the most popular orchestrator around. Then we’ll reverse things by showing you how to use Docker to simulate AWS services locally. Finally, we’ll cover the building of a Docker framework on Mesos.

Chapter 13 is an extended discussion of the factors that might be considered in choosing a Docker-based platform. The choices can be bewildering, but this might help you structure your thoughts and make a better decision, should you need to.