Docker for Azure vs. Docker Machine

General
1

I’m relatively new to Docker, please bear with me and my possibly dumb question.

I’m trying to deeply understand why I’d need Docker for Azure and when I should potentially use it. So far, I’ve been using Docker Machine to Provision Azure VMs and set up a swarm.

Now there’s Docker for Azure.

  • What are the key differences between both, in terms of the paradigms and positioning?
  • When to use which?
  • Is Docker Machine eventually going away / being deprecated?

Thanks for your insight!

2

@ralfr Docker4Azure is the Docker recommended approach today to provision a Docker swarm on Azure. Docker4Azure takes care of various integrations with the native Azure platform and docker swarm in the following areas:

  1. Automatic swarm creation and configuration using all the Azure nodes - no user intervention needed.
  2. Automatic creation/updating of Azure load balancer rules as swarm services with ports are deployed.
  3. Rolling upgrade of swarm.
  4. Quick and easy provisioning of persistent storage through the cloudstor volume plugin

Docker4Azure deploys VMs with a minimal OS image maintained by Docker that is geared towards running containers.

3 Likes
3

Thanks for your fast response. Very well appreciated.

Is it fair to assume that Docker Machine and its Azure related capabilities might get deprecated and Docker for Azure might become the only Docker Inc. supported way of provisioning Docker to Azure?

4

I think using Docker for Azure is a good bet going forward.

There are no concrete plans to deprecate Docker Machine, but we’re not actively investing in Machine either (releases are published with new versions of Docker, however)