[Shorts] Using the Nutanix Docker Machine Driver

Nutanix announced version 4.7 of its AOS, basically the operating system for the controller VMs. One of the things that is new, are the so called Acropolis Container Services. Basically allowing the Nutanix cluster to act as in such a way that you can for example use the docker-machine command (with a corresponding driver) to create new Docker instances that deploy automatically on your cluster.

While we are still waiting for the Docker Machine Driver to be posted to our portal, I’ve dug up an internal version of the driver, and decided to test it and post my experiences.

Right now it’s relatively simple to get started. You need your Nutanix cluster running AHV and some working credentials for the cluster. Also, you need a system that has Docker machine installed.

Once you have that, download the Docker machine driver for your platform from Nutanix (once it is posted that is). We should be offering a driver for OSX, Windows and Linux, so you should pretty much be covered.

On OSX the the procedure to get started is relatively simple. Copy the file you downloaded, and if it has an .osx extension in the filename, remove that extension. Modify the file to allow it to be executed (chmod +x), and then move it to the directory that contains your docker-machine executable/binary.

Now, you can start docker-machine and call the Nutanix driver, and that will give you a couple of additional options:

docker-machine create --driver nutanix 

Usage: docker-machine create [OPTIONS] [arg...]
 Create a machine

Description:
 Run 'docker-machine create --driver name' to include the create flags 
 for that driver in the help text.

Options:
 .... 
 --nutanix-endpoint Nutanix management endpoint ip address/FQDN [$NUTANIX_ENDPOINT]
 --nutanix-password Nutanix management password [$NUTANIX_PASSWORD]
 --nutanix-username Nutanix management username [$NUTANIX_USERNAME]
 --nutanix-vm-cores "1" Number of cores per VCPU of the VM to be created [$NUTANIX_VM_CORES]
 --nutanix-vm-cpus "1" Number of VCPUs of the VM to be created [$NUTANIX_VM_CPUS]
 --nutanix-vm-image [--nutanix-vm-image option --nutanix-vm-image option] The name of the VM disks to clone from, for the newly created VM
 --nutanix-vm-mem "1024" Memory in MB of the VM to be created [$NUTANIX_VM_MEM]
 --nutanix-vm-network [--nutanix-vm-network option --nutanix-vm-network option] The name of the network to attach to the newly created VM
 ....

Now, to create for example a VM based on an ISO image that is stored in your image configuration, you simply use one command:

docker-machine create --driver nutanix --nutanix-username 'docker-deployment-user' --nutanix-password 'P@ssw0rd' --nutanix-endpoint '10.0.0.50:9440'  --nutanix-vm-network production --nutanix-vm-image CentOS-7 Docker-CentOS

And you can obviously also add things like VM memory and CPU information. Once you hit enter, the driver connects to the Nutanix cluster and tells it what to do.

The result?

And you can manage your systems using docker-machine like you are used to. Now there is obviously more you can do, but I just wanted to give you a quick way to get started. So, have fun playing with it. 🙂