Manage docker remotely

Why I’m doing this?

I just want to have a docker environment and I don’t want installed it on my machine,sometime is too huge to install docker on workstation machines(install docker desktop on macOS will at latest 4GB Storage and take some memory). macOS don’t have docker cli service only have desktop which I don’t want to have a GUI.

At meanwhile I have docker installed on my remote server, I’m thinking what if we manage remote docker just like kubectl, the fact is this is workable. So let’s get started:

Remote Server

# on remote docker host
>_ root ~ # mkdir /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
>_ root ~ # vim /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d/docker.conf
>_ root ~ # cat /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d/docker.conf
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd
# check listen port
>_ root ~ # grep ExecStart /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd  -H tcp://0.0.0.0:4243 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock --selinux-enabled=false  --log-opt max-size=1g
# make port keep same as service file
>_ root ~ # vim /etc/docker/daemon.json
>_ root ~ # cat /etc/docker/daemon.json
{
  "hosts":[
    "unix:///var/run/docker.sock",
    "tcp://0.0.0.0:4243"
  ]
}
>_ root ~ # systemctl daemon-reload
>_ root ~ # systemctl restart docker

Client

# on macOS install docker command cli
~ » brew install docker
~ » docker  -H bo.ms:4243 version 
Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           20.10.22
 API version:       1.41
 ...
~ » export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://bo.ms:4243"
~ » echo "export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://bo.ms:4243"" >> ~/.zshrc
~ » source ~/.zshrc
~ » docker ps | grep ldap
bc8ea256297e   osixia/openldap    "/container/tool/run"    7 days ago    Up 13 minutes   0.0.0.0:389->389/tcp, :::389->389/tcp, 0.0.0.0:636->636/tcp, :::636->636/tcp                                                      ldap

This is just a test environment for test purpose, for production we have to configure TLS to make sure the communication between client and server is secure.

Here is an example of tutorial how how to configure it with ssl certificate.

https://juejin.cn/post/7120568388216160270