Weaveworks is the company that develops Weave - the most productive way for developers to connect, observe and control Docker containers. To learn about our products, including getting started tutorials, visit our website, read about the 1.0 release of Weave, visit our documentation or continue to read about some of the more technical aspects of Weave in this readme.
Weave creates a virtual network that connects Docker containers deployed across multiple hosts and enables their automatic discovery.
Applications use the network just as if the containers were all plugged into the same network switch, with no need to configure port mappings, links, etc. Services provided by application containers on the weave network can be made accessible to the outside world, regardless of where those containers are running. Similarly, existing internal systems can be exposed to application containers irrespective of their location.
Weave can traverse firewalls and operate in partially connected networks. Traffic can be encrypted, allowing hosts to be connected across an untrusted network.
With weave you can easily construct applications consisting of multiple containers, running anywhere.
Weave works alongside Docker's existing (single host) networking capabilities, so these can continue to be used by containers.
Ensure you are running Linux (kernel 3.8 or later) and have Docker (version 1.3.1 or later) installed. Then install weave with
sudo curl -L git.io/weave -o /usr/local/bin/weave
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/weave
CoreOS users see here for an example of installing weave using cloud-config.
Weave respects the environment variable DOCKER_HOST, so you can run
it locally to control a weave network on a remote host.
Say you have docker running on two hosts, accessible to each other as
$HOST1 and $HOST2, and want to deploy an application consisting of
two containers, one on each host.
First start weave on $HOST1:
host1$ weave launch && weave launch-dns && weave launch-proxy
this runs the weave router, DNS and Docker API proxy, each in their
own container. Next we configure our DOCKER_HOST environment
variable to point to the proxy, so that containers launched via the
docker command line are automatically attached to the weave network:
host1$ eval $(weave proxy-env)
Finally we run our application container; this happens via the proxy so it is automatically allocated an IP address and registered in DNS:
host1$ docker run --name a1 -ti ubuntu
That's it! If our application consists of more than one container on
this host we simply launch them with docker run as appropriate.
Next we repeat similar steps on $HOST2...
host2$ weave launch $HOST1 && weave launch-dns && weave launch-proxy
host2$ eval $(weave proxy-env)
host2$ docker run --name a2 -ti ubuntu
The only difference, apart from the name of the application container,
is that we tell our weave that it should peer with the weave on
$HOST1 (specified as the IP address or hostname, and optional
:port, by which $HOST2 can reach it). NB: if there is a firewall
between $HOST1 and $HOST2, you must open the weave port (6783 by
default; this can be overriden by setting WEAVE_PORT) for TCP and
UDP.
Note that we could instead have told the weave on $HOST1 to connect to
$HOST2, or told both about each other. Order does not matter here;
weave automatically (re)connects to peers when they become
available. Also, we can tell weave to connect to multiple peers by
supplying multiple addresses, separated by spaces. And we can
add peers dynamically.
The router, DNS and Docker API proxy need to be started once per
host. The relevant container images are pulled down on demand, but if
you wish you can preload them by running weave setup - this is
particularly useful for automated deployments, and ensures that there
are no delays during later operations.
Now that we've got everything set up, let's see whether our containers can talk to each other...
In the container started on $HOST1...
root@a1:/# ping -c 1 -q a2
PING a2.weave.local (10.40.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- a2.weave.local ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.341/0.341/0.341/0.000 ms
Similarly, in the container started on $HOST2...
root@a2:/# ping -c 1 -q a1
PING a1.weave.local (10.32.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- a1.weave.local ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.366/0.366/0.366/0.000 ms
So there we have it, two containers on separate hosts happily talking to each other.
Found a bug, want to suggest a feature, or have a question?
File an issue, or email
help@weave.works. When reporting a bug, please include which version of
weave you are running, as shown by weave version.
Follow weave on Twitter: @weaveworks.
Read the Weave blog: Weaveblog.
IRC: #weavenetwork