Container-optimized Google Compute Engine images

This is an Open Preview release of containers on Virtual Machines. As a result, we may make backward-incompatible changes and it is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy. Customers should take this into account when using this Open Preview release.

Google Compute Engine is extending its support for Docker containers. This release is an Open Preview of a container-optimized OS image that includes Docker and an open source agent to manage containers. Below, you'll find links to interact with the community interested in Docker on Google, open source repositories, and examples to get started. We look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing what you build.

The container OS image includes:

• Debian 7.
• The Docker runtime. To learn more about Docker, visit www.docker.io.
• An open-source metadata framework and an agent to create and manage containers based on the metadata.

We encourage you to be involved in the development and design of the image and the related open source projects:

• Give early feedback and talk with the community (including the developer team) on the google-containers mailing list.
• Ask development and best practices questions on Stack Overflow.
• Browse and contribute to the open source agent on GitHub.
• Chat with the community on IRC.
• For questions about Docker images or with Docker in general, we encourage you to join the very active Docker community.

Starting a bare container-vm instance

A container VM image is specified like any other Google Compute Engine image, as an argument to the--image flag of the gcloud compute instances create command. Unlike other images, you must specify the entire path to the image:

$ gcloud compute instances create instance-name
  --project project-id
  --image projects/google-containers/global/images/container-vm-v20140522
  --zone us-central1-a
  --machine machineTypes/f1-micro

You can list all available versions with:

$ gcloud compute images list --project google-containers

Once the instance is running, you can SSH into the instance and use the Docker command line tool to create and manage your containers.

Creating containers at time of instance creation

The container VM image includes an agent that can parse a YAML-formatted list of containers and create those containers at the instance's boot time. The agent also monitors the listed containers, restarting them should they fail at any time.

This manifest is passed to the --metadata_from_file flag of gcloud compute instances create as a key/value pair whose key is always google-container-manifest. The value of the pair is the relative path to a manifest.

--metadata-from-file google-container-manifest=containers.yaml

All of the containers in the group share the same network namespace; you can connect from one container to a service running on another container using localhost and the port of the service. Two containers of the same group cannot run services on the same port.

Quickstart example

The following example creates a new Compute Engine instance with a google/busybox container. The container responds to incoming streams on port 8080 with "hello world".

Create the manifest

Create a containers.yaml file with the following contents:

version: v1beta1
containers:
  - name: simple-echo
    image: google/busybox
    command: ['nc', '-p', '8080', '-l', '-l', '-e', 'echo', 'hello world!']
    ports:
      - name: nc-echo
        hostPort: 8080
        containerPort: 8080

Create the instance

Create your Google Compute Engine instance with the gcloud compute instances create command, and pass the manifest using the --metadata-from-file flag:

$ gcloud compute instances create containervm-test-1
    --image projects/google-containers/global/images/container-vm-v20140522
    --metadata-from-file google-container-manifest=containers.yaml
    --zone us-central1-a
    --machine machineTypes/f1-micro

Test your app

Your new instance is up and running and contains the Docker container you specified in the manifest. To test it, SSH into your instance:

$ gcutil ssh containervm-test-1

To confirm that the container has been created:

me@containervm-test-1:~$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                   COMMAND                CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
eb8cfe4e7848        google/busybox:latest   nc -p 8080 -l -l -e    12 minutes ago      Up 12 minutes                                simple-echo
1e72de9888bb        busybox:latest          sh -c 'rm -f nap &&    12 minutes ago      Up 12 minutes       0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcp   .net

Use netcat to query the container:

me@containervm-test-1:~$ nc localhost 8080
hello world!

More examples

The Container VM Guestbook GitHub repository contains another example of using GCE container VMs to run Docker containers. It demonstrates the deployment of a Redis database and a simple Python app to create a guestbook app with local storage.

Container manifest

The YAML file is formatted as follows:

version: v1beta1      // Required.
containers:           // Required.
  - name: string      // Required.
    image: string     // Required.
    command: [string]
    workingDir: string
    volumeMounts:
      - name: string
        path: string
        readOnly: boolean
    ports:
      - name: string
        containerPort: int
        hostPort: int
        protocol: string
    env:
      - key: string
        value: string
volumes:
  - name: string

Example manifest file

The file below:

• Creates three containers: the google/docker-registry that allows you to push/pull images from Google Cloud Storage, and a client and a server image pulled from that registry.
• Creates a Docker data volume called data.
• Mounts data on two of the containers.
• Opens up ports on two containers.
• Specifies environment variables on the repository container to set before the container is run.

version: v1beta1
containers:
  - name: repository
    image: google/docker-registry
    ports:
      - name: registry
        containerPort: 5000
    env:
      - key: GCS_BUCKET
        value: my-private-repo-bucket
  - name: client
    image: localhost:5000/data-loader
    volumeMounts:
      - name: data
        path: /mnt/data
  - name: server
    image: localhost:5000/data-server
    ports:
      - name: www
        containerPort: 80
    volumeMounts:
      - name: data
        path: /mnt/data
volumes:
  - name: data

特に記載のない限り、このページのコンテンツはクリエイティブ・コモンズの表示 3.0 ライセンスにより使用許諾されます。サンプル コードは Apache 2.0 ライセンス（リンク先は英語）により使用許諾されます。詳しくは、Google のサイトに関するポリシーをご覧ください。