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I already developed Node.js API project which use docker-compose up for start. Now im trying to deploy the project to remote Ubuntu host via ssh. Also I installed node.js and docker on remote host.

The question is: How can I deploy local project to host via ssh and docker-compose?
Whats the right order of that? Do I need to create Dockerfile for that, or I can do that with docker-compose.yml?

Thanks in advance.

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  • If you don't have a Dockerfile now, what do you actually have? If you're not building a custom image already then it might be easiest to install Node and not Docker on the remote host. Commented Jan 26, 2020 at 11:04
  • @DavidMaze currently I use docker-compose for running the project locally. As a option sure I can run node.js project without dockers, but I want to understand how it should work with docker and want to solve it that way. Commented Jan 26, 2020 at 11:12
  • I'm not familiar with docker world and trying to figure out what should be the next step. Commented Jan 26, 2020 at 11:13
  • 1
    Docker's Containerizing an application tutorial might be a good first step. If you're just using Docker "so you don't have to install Node", this is probably a harder development and deployment environment than just using Node directly. Commented Jan 26, 2020 at 11:22
  • Can't you just move your docker-compose.yml and associated files to the remote host, and run docker-compose there? Commented Jan 26, 2020 at 13:27

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If you want to deploy to a remote Docker host from your your local host, there are a couple of options.

You can configure the remote Docker daemon to accept TCP connections, authenticated in both directions using SSL certificates. This is probably the recommended way of setting up remote access, since it is natively supported by the Docker client. You can read more about this in Docker's "Protect the Docker daemon socket" documentation.

A second option is to forward the Docker socket from the remote host to your local host over an ssh tunnel. If you ssh into the remote host like this...

ssh -L /tmp/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock me@remotehost

...then you can access the remote Docker daemon using the /tmp/docker.sock socket on your local host. You would need to set your DOCKER_HOST environment variable like this:

export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///tmp/docker.sock

docker-compose recognizes the DOCKER_HOST environment variable as well.

Of course, this only works as long as you are connected to the remote host.

For example:

bash-5.0$ docker ps
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?
bash-5.0$ ssh -nN -L /tmp/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock docker.local &
[1] 1363146
bash-5.0$ export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///tmp/docker.sock
bash-5.0$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
10924fc5f455        registry:2          "/entrypoint.sh /etc…"   2 weeks ago         Up 19 hours         0.0.0.0:5000->5000/tcp   registry

(Here I've placed my ssh connection in the background so that I can continue to work on my local host. You could of course just using a second terminal for the ssh connection.)

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