BretFisher

Yes! Docker Swarm is still being supported in 2025, and we have community and solution resources in an Awesome List https://github.com/BretFisher/awesome-swarm

I have a video on using DMR https://youtu.be/3p2uWjFyI1U?si=dazN8rRRdIbAa8Sl

It's "free" but not open source?

I don't think it's released yet.

Good question.

- Mirantis (the new maintainers of SwarmKit) have an article on that https://www.mirantis.com/blog/kubernetes-vs-swarm-these-comp...

- A recent list is here: https://github.com/collabnix/dockerswarm#companies-using-doc...

- I sell two Swarm courses on Udemy that are purchased daily and I've noticed more questions on Swarm lately. Not a lot, but more than a few each week.

- My Discord server had enough chatter on Swarm that a few months back we made a #swarm channel and it's now a top-3 channel (12k members) https://devops.fan

My docker mastery course just had 17 videos added on GitHub actions, my fav automation tool. It has vids and working yaml for container build/test workflows (yaml is open source at GitHub.com/bretfisher). I'm actually doing a workshop next week in Tampa at Civo Navigate called "Docker 101 in 2023" lol Course coupons at bretfisher.com

Thanks nunez!

Oh thanks! Coupons at www.bretfisher.com/courses

sure it does, you just need a proper volume driver like rexray AWS EFS

You might be confused by bad marketing or misleading click bait? see https://www.bretfisher.com/the-future-of-docker-swarm/, see their SwarmKit repo commits, see that they keep open sourcing new tools built on Swarm like https://github.com/docker/stacks and https://github.com/docker/app

Yea that's the legacy "classic" swarm from pre-2016. Docker isn't moving away from Swarm, in fact they keep adding features. See https://www.bretfisher.com/the-future-of-docker-swarm/

Last month they released https://github.com/docker/stacks for Swarm.

Also, every industry survey I've seen in the last year on orchestrator uses shows increases in overall usage of K8s and Swarm, which I consider the better measure of a project's health. (CNCF, Digital Ocean, F5, Sysdig)

Swarm isn’t going anywhere. It has a growing community and the team is activly working in the repos. See my updates: https://www.bretfisher.com/the-future-of-docker-swarm/

Um, I was a top rated session that was repeated on Friday and was 100% Swarm, and had a full house https://twitter.com/BretFisher/status/1007099831783862272

Yep I wrote this, and it needs an update just months later. Lots happening.

Even today a big PR was pulled in to improve the scalability of Swarm https://github.com/moby/moby/pull/37372

More updates here https://github.com/docker/swarmkit/issues/2665#issuecomment-...

nope https://www.bretfisher.com/is-swarm-dead-answered-by-a-docke...

A full list of all the evidence that it's not dead: https://www.bretfisher.com/is-swarm-dead-answered-by-a-docke...

A full list of all the evidence that it's not dead: https://www.bretfisher.com/is-swarm-dead-answered-by-a-docke...

The TL;DR [direct quote from Docker blog](https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in-docke...) after the Kubernetes announcement:

> But it’s equally important for us to note that Swarm orchestration is not going away. Swarm forms an integral cluster management component of the Docker EE platform; in addition, Swarm will operate side-by-side with Kubernetes in a Docker EE cluster, allowing customers to select, based on their needs, the most suitable orchestration tool at application deployment time.

The TL;DR [direct quote from Docker blog](https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in-docke...) after the Kubernetes announcement:

> But it’s equally important for us to note that Swarm orchestration is not going away. Swarm forms an integral cluster management component of the Docker EE platform; in addition, Swarm will operate side-by-side with Kubernetes in a Docker EE cluster, allowing customers to select, based on their needs, the most suitable orchestration tool at application deployment time.

I'm a Docker Captain and Swarm consultant. Yes, lots of proof here's just a few things from a similar post last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771118

Nov 16h, 2017 Docker creates a blog post covering why Swarm is key to the future of Docker EE and K8s integration: https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in-docke...

March 9th, 2018 Docker creates a blog post highlighting a major new feature coming to Swarm in Docker EE 2.0 (alongside K8s integration). https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/enhanced-layer-7-routing-swa...

There's a lot more evidence that I hope to put into a blog post soon. No company will guarantee they will always make a product, but we've got years of enterprise support for Swarm as it is, and they keep adding functionality so I have no evidence of them stopping or even hinting at such a thing.

I work almost exclusively with people learning Swarm, and companies deploying Swarm. In Sacramento, CA today at MuraCon conference listening to stories of teams I've never met, taking Docker Swarm CE into production. Most I see start out deploying it for web services, web sites, worker jobs, then maybe dipping into persistent data containers with something like REX-Ray for shared storage. 18.03 is the latest Docker CE release and solid afaik. The dev-to-prod workflow is pretty great woth docker-compose to Swarm Mode. See my DockerCon talk https://dockercon.docker.com/watch/WdAeLaLuSCNQwEp61YVXUt and my YouTube Channel on stuff I just started doing https://www.youtube.com/c/BretFisherITPro and I also have articles and courses at https://bretfisher.com

Swarm isn't going away, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771118

Swarm isn't going away, and in fact, Docker has stated it publicly multiple times on their blog since K8s announcement, and has continued to add new features and fix bugs. Their Kubernetes integrations in Docker EE takes advantage of Swarm's built-in security for node setup. Lots of improvement in the last 6-9 months on Overlay and zero-downtime updates, but true, compared to the first year of SwarmKit, this last 6 months has slowed down in terms of PR's for new features, likely due to focus on K8s integration. Your rolling update issues were likely related to bugs that are (hopefully) now fixed.

Could it be that the teams are simply focused on adding K8s support and getting the Docker EE out of Beta?

Public statement on their blog after the K8s announcement in EU:

"But it’s equally important for us to note that Swarm orchestration is not going away. Swarm forms an integral cluster management component of the Docker EE platform; in addition, Swarm will operate side-by-side with Kubernetes in a Docker EE cluster, allowing customers to select, based on their needs, the most suitable orchestration tool at application deployment time."

https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in-docke...

There's still plenty of PR's and activity in the SwarmKit and Libnetwork repos:

https://github.com/docker/swarmkit/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/libnetwork/pulse/monthly

Maybe https://github.com/v2tec/watchtower, but Keel looks cool.

The difference between reality and Internet news/blogs can sometimes be vast, and we "problem solvers" have to be aware of that. There are hundreds or more enterprise companies using Docker EE, which is using Swarm currently as its orchestrator/scheduler. (see https://www.docker.com/customers) and I also recently ranted about the assumption that everyone is using one thing for orchestration. https://twitter.com/BretFisher/status/958416831659872256

IMO, a healthy ecosystem always has multiple opinions on how to solve a problem.

I'm biased and like Swarm for those that want a great UX (from dev through CI/CD to prod) and their needs match the problems that Swarm solves. I currently teach workshops and consult on Swarm because that's what my circles ask for. It doesn't make anyone wrong or better. These are all opinions on how to create container clusters and some teams like Mesos/DCOS, some Swarm, and some Kubernetes.

In the end, does Swarm solve your problems? If so, stick with it until it doesn't. Docker has publicly stated on their blog months ago that they are not EOL'ing Swarm, despite the news falsely stating Swarms demise. In Docker's main paid product, Docker EE, their new Kubernetes integration actually uses Swarm to help ease K8s deployment AFAIK, so at this point, I feel its future is solid and don't have a problem using it or recommending it. It's still early days for the ecosystem through, so I might be singing a different tune in two years. Swarm may not be the most talked about container orchestrator, but like others, it does solve problems for many people.

One assumption I've made (in my 30+ certs over 20 years, all in sysadmin/tools) is that ops/sysadmin can be much more tool/feature centric. It's rather easy to test someone's ability to know cli options or know the "one way" to configure a tool.