Docker Enterprise architecture

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Docker Enterprise enables deploying your workloads for high availability (HA) onto the orchestrator of your choice. Docker Enterprise system components can run on multiple manager nodes in the cluster, and if one manager node fails, another takes its place automatically, without impact to the cluster.

Choose your orchestrator

Docker Enterprise provides access to the full API sets of three popular orchestrators:

  • Kubernetes: Full YAML object support
  • SwarmKit: Service-centric, Compose file version 3
  • “Classic” Swarm: Container-centric, Compose file version 2

Docker Enterprise proxies the underlying API of each orchestrator, giving you access to all of the capabilities of each orchestrator, along with the benefits of Docker Enterprise, like role-based access control and Docker Content Trust.

Docker Enterprise components

Docker Enterprise has three major components, which together enable a full software supply chain, from image creation, to secure image storage, to secure image deployment.

  • Docker Engine - Enterprise: The commercially supported Docker engine for creating images and running them in Docker containers.

  • Docker Trusted Registry (DTR): The production-grade image storage solution from Docker.

    DTR is designed to scale horizontally as your usage increases. You can add more replicas to make DTR scale to your demand and for high availability.

    All DTR replicas run the same set of services, and changes to their configuration are propagated automatically to other replicas.

  • Universal Control Plane (UCP): Deploys applications from images, by managing orchestrators, like Kubernetes and Swarm.

    UCP is designed for high availability (HA). You can join multiple UCP manager nodes to the cluster, and if one manager node fails, another takes its place automatically without impact to the cluster.

    Changes to the configuration of one UCP manager node are propagated automatically to other nodes.

Universal Control Plane (UCP)

Docker UCP is a containerized application that runs on Docker Engine - Enterprise and extends its functionality to make it easier to deploy, configure, and monitor your applications at scale.

Docker UCP provides a web interface and a CLI for deploying images from Kubernetes YAML or Compose files. Once your workload is deployed, UCP enables monitoring containers and pods across your Docker cluster.

UCP also secures Docker with role-based access control so that only authorized users can make changes and deploy applications to your cluster.

Once a UCP instance is deployed, you don’t interact with Docker Engine - Enterprise directly. Instead, you interact with UCP. Since UCP exposes the standard Docker API and the full Kubernetes API transparently, you can use the tools you already know and love, like kubectl, the Docker CLI client, and Docker Compose. Learn about UCP architecture.

Docker Trusted Registry (DTR)

Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) is a containerized application that runs on a Docker UCP cluster.

Once you have DTR deployed, you use your Docker CLI client to login, push, and pull images.

For high-availability, you can deploy multiple DTR replicas, one on each UCP worker node.

All DTR replicas run the same set of services, and changes to their configuration are automatically propagated to other replicas. Learn about DTR architecture.

Where to go next

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