Install UCP for production

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Docker Universal Control Plane (UCP) is a containerized application that can be installed on-premises or on a cloud infrastructure.

If you’re installing Docker Datacenter on Azure, follow this guide.

Step 1: Validate the system requirements

The first step in installing UCP, is ensuring your infrastructure has all the requirements UCP needs to run.

Step 2: Install CS Docker on all nodes

UCP is a containerized application that requires CS Docker Engine 1.10.0 or above to run. It is recommended to install the exact same version of the CS Docker Engine on all nodes.

So on each host that you want to be part of the UCP cluster, install CS Docker Engine 1.10.0 or above. In the case where you are creating a VM template with CS Engine already installed, make sure that /etc/docker/key.json is not included in the image. You can do this by simply removing /etc/docker/key.json. You can then restart Docker on each node, which will generate new /etc/docker/key.json files.

Step 3: Customize named volumes

Docker UCP uses named volumes to persist data. If you want to customize the volume drivers and flags of these volumes, you can create the volumes before installing UCP.

If the volumes don’t exist, when installing UCP they are created with the default volume driver and flags.

Step 4: Customize the server certificates

The UCP cluster uses TLS to secure all communications. Two Certificate Authorities (CA) are used for this:

  • Cluster root CA: generates certificates for new nodes joining the cluster and admin user bundles.
  • Client root CA: generates non-admin user bundles.

You can customize UCP to use certificates signed by an external Certificate Authority. These certificates are used instead of the ones generated by the client root CA. That way you can use a certificate from a CA that your browsers and client tools already trust.

If you want to use your own certificates:

  1. Log into the host where you intend to install UCP.

  2. Create a volume with the name ucp-controller-server-certs.

  3. Add the following files to /var/lib/docker/volumes/ucp-controller-server-certs/_data/:

    File Description
    ca.pem Your root CA certificate.
    cert.pem Your signed UCP controller certificate followed by any intermediate certificates.
    key.pem Your UCP controller private key.

Step 5: Install the UCP controller

To install UCP you use the docker/ucp image. This image has commands to install, configure, and backup UCP. To find what commands and options are available, check the reference documentation.

To install UCP:

  1. Log in to the machine where you want to install UCP.

  2. Use the docker/ucp install command to install UCP.

    In this example we run the install command interactively, so that the command prompts for the necessary configuration values. You can also use flags to pass values to the install command.

    $ docker run --rm -it --name ucp \
      -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
      docker/ucp install -i \
      --host-address <$UCP_PUBLIC_IP>
    

    Where:

    • i, specify to run the install command interactively,
    • host-address, is the public IP where users or a load balancer can access UCP,
    • Also, include the --external-server-cert flag if you’re using server certificates signed by an external CA.

    When installing Docker UCP, overlay networking is automatically configured for you. If you are running Docker CS Engine 1.10, or have custom configurations on your Docker CS Engine, you need to restart the Docker daemon at this point.

  3. Check that the UCP web application is running.

    In your browser, navigate to the address where you’ve installed UCP.

    If you’re not using an external CA, your browser warns that UCP is an unsafe site. This happens because you’re accessing UCP using HTTPS but the certificates used by UCP are not trusted by your browser.

Step 6: License your installation

Now that your UCP controller is installed, you need to license it. Learn how to license your installation.

Step 7: Backup the controller CAs

For a highly available installation, you can add more controller nodes to the UCP cluster. The controller nodes are replicas of each other.

For this, you need to make the CAs on each controller node use the same root certificates and keys.

To create a backup of the CAs used on the controller node:

  1. Log into the controller node using ssh.
  2. Run the docker/ucp backup command.

    $ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        docker/ucp backup \
        --interactive \
        --root-ca-only \
        --passphrase "secret" > /tmp/backup.tar
    

Learn more about the backup command.

Step 8: Add controller replicas to the UCP cluster

This step is optional.

For a highly available installation, you can add more controller nodes to the UCP cluster. For that, use the docker/ucp join --replica command. Learn more about the join command.

For each node that you want to install as a controller replica:

  1. Log into that node using ssh.

  2. Make sure you transfer the backup.tar from the previous step to this node.

  3. Use the join command with the replica option:

    In this example wwe run the join command interactively, so that the command prompts for the necessary configuration values. We also pass the backup.tar file from the previous step to ensure that the CAs are replicated to the new controller node.

    $ docker run --rm -it --name ucp \
      -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
      -v $BACKUP_PATH/backup.tar:/backup.tar \
      docker/ucp join \
      --interactive \
      --replica \
      --passphrase "secret"
    
  4. Since UCP configures your Docker Engine for multi-host networking, it might prompt you to restart the Docker daemon. To make the installation faster, join all replica nodes first, and only then restart the Docker daemon on those nodes.

  5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 on the other nodes you want to set up as replicas. Make sure you set up 3, 5, or 7 controllers.

  6. Check the cluster state.

    The Dashboard page of UCP should list all your controller nodes.

    UCP nodes page

Step 9: Ensure controllers know about each other

Internally, each controller node has a key-value store that keeps track of the controllers that are part of the cluster. When you installed and joined replica controllers, the Docker daemon on that host was configured to use that key-value store.

To make the cluster fault-tolerant and able to recover faster with less downtime, you need to configure the Docker daemon on each controller node to know about the key-value store that is running on the other nodes.

For each controller node:

  1. Log into that node using ssh.

  2. Run the engine-discovery command.

    $ docker run --rm -it \
        --name ucp \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        docker/ucp engine-discovery \
        --update
    

Step 10: Add more nodes to the UCP cluster

Now you can add additional nodes to your UCP cluster. These are the nodes that will be running your containers.

For each node that you want to add to your UCP cluster:

  1. Log into that node.

  2. Use the join command, to join the node to the cluster:

    $ docker run --rm -it --name ucp \
      -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
      docker/ucp join -i
    
  3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 on the other nodes you want to add to your UCP cluster.

  4. Check the cluster state.

    The Dashboard page of UCP should list all your controller nodes.

    UCP nodes page

Step 11. Download a client certificate bundle

To validate that your cluster is correctly configured, try accessing the cluster with the Docker CLI client. For this, you need to get a client certificate bundle. Learn more about user bundles.

Where to go next

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