Chapter 10. Why Stop at Containers? Automating Your Infrastructure

The last nine chapters have talked a lot about automating Docker. That is what this book is about, after all. It is important to remember that there is more to a Docker cluster than just Docker. There is the registry, shared storage, overlay networks, and the actual orchestration tool, be it Swarm, Kubernetes, Mesos, or something else. There is one last, very important piece to the puzzle. The servers that all of that run on. Whether those servers are hardware or part of a public cloud, they too need to be managed. After all, what good is it if the Docker orchestration tool can quickly scale an image out if it takes hours to deploy a new Docker host?

This chapter will look at strategies and tools that can be used to automate the server-side of a Docker cluster. It will start by examining the servers themselves, then move on to options for running those machines in the cluster. Finally, it will look at options for removing...