Docker Machine driver plugins are available for many cloud platforms, so you can use Machine to provision cloud hosts. When you use Docker Machine for provisioning, you create cloud hosts with Docker Engine installed on them.
Install and run Docker Machine, and create an account with the cloud provider.
Then you provide account verification, security credentials, and configuration options for the providers as flags to docker-machine create. The flags are unique for each cloud-specific driver. For instance, to pass a DigitalOcean access token you use the --digitalocean-access-token flag. Take a look at the examples below for DigitalOcean and AWS.
For DigitalOcean, this command creates a Droplet (cloud host) called “docker-sandbox”.
$ docker-machine create --driver digitalocean --digitalocean-access-token xxxxx docker-sandbox
For a step-by-step guide on using Machine to create Docker hosts on Digital Ocean, see the DigitalOcean Example.
For AWS EC2, this command creates an instance called “aws-sandbox”:
$ docker-machine create --driver amazonec2 --amazonec2-access-key AKI******* --amazonec2-secret-key 8T93C******* aws-sandbox
For a step-by-step guide on using Machine to create Dockerized AWS instances, see the Amazon Web Services (AWS) example.
The docker-machine create command typically requires that you specify, at a minimum:
--driver - to indicate the provider on which to create the machine (VirtualBox, DigitalOcean, AWS, and so on)
Account verification and security credentials (for cloud providers), specific to the cloud service you are using
<machine> - name of the host you want to create
For convenience, docker-machine uses sensible defaults for choosing settings such as the image that the server is based on, but you override the defaults using the respective flags, such as --digitalocean-image. This is useful if, for example, you want to create a cloud server with a lot of memory and CPUs, rather than the default behavior of creating smaller servers.
For a full list of the flags/settings available and their defaults, see the output of docker-machine create -h at the command line, the create command in the Machine command line reference, and driver options and operating system defaults in the Machine driver reference.
When you install Docker Machine, you get a set of drivers for various cloud providers (like Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, or Microsoft Azure) and local providers (like Oracle VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion, or Microsoft Hyper-V).
See Docker Machine driver reference for details on the drivers, including required flags and configuration options (which vary by provider).
Several Docker Machine driver plugins for use with other cloud platforms are available from 3rd party contributors. These are use-at-your-own-risk plugins, not maintained by or formally associated with Docker.
You can register an already existing docker host by passing the daemon url. With that, you can have the same workflow as on a host provisioned by docker-machine.
$ docker-machine create --driver none --url=tcp://50.134.234.20:2376 custombox
$ docker-machine ls
NAME ACTIVE DRIVER STATE URL
custombox * none Running tcp://50.134.234.20:2376
Swarm mode supersedes Docker Machine provisioning of swarm clusters
In previous releases, Docker Machine was used to provision swarm clusters, but this is legacy. Swarm mode, built into Docker Engine, supersedes Machine provisioning of swarm clusters. The topics below show you how to get started with the new swarm mode.
You can use Docker Machine to create local virtual hosts on which to deploy and test swarm mode clusters.
Good places to start working with Docker Machine and swarm mode are these tutorials:
docker, machine, amazonec2, azure, digitalocean, google, openstack, rackspace, softlayer, virtualbox, vmwarefusion, vmwarevcloudair, vmwarevsphere, exoscale
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https://docs.docker.com/machine/get-started-cloud/