caddy-docker-proxy VS Portainer

Sticky sessions are supported: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/reverse_pr..., and yes it's pluggable so you could write your own LB policy. Very easy, just copy the code from Caddy's source to write your own plugin. Let us know if you need help.

Also yes, Caddy does service discovery if you use https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy, configuration via Docker labels. Or you can use dynamic upstreams (built-in) https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/reverse_pr... to use A/AAAA or SRV DNS records to load your list of upstreams.

Caddy via Caddy Docker Proxy (network).

https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy

It handles the routing to multiple dockerized projects on one server, by scanning docker compose files for labels and automatically setting up the required caddy configuration.

My go to is always this instead:

https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy

Single label to a docker container and with correct DNS you’ll have an automatically managed certificate right away.

I have had a great experience with using this: https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy

It combines caddy with docker-compose labels, making it super easy to spin up new projects that can immediately be exposed.

If you want a slightly heavier but more robust solution, caddy-docker-proxy[0] is a plugin that listens to the Docker socket and automatically updates the Caddy configuration based on Docker labels you add to containers.

I.e. it makes Caddy act a bit more like Traefik. Most of the time, you'll just add the label `caddy.reverse_proxy={{upstreams http 8080}}` to your containers and the plugin will regenerate Caddy's configuration whenever the container is modified.

[0] https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy

I disagree, Caddy works great in Docker. See https://caddyserver.com/docs/running#docker-compose, and CDP is a project that autoconfigures Caddy from labels https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy. Regarding plugins, it's super simple to write a Dockerfile to add plugins, we ship a builder image variant that can be used to compile in any plugins you want.

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This way, Caddy will buffer the request and give 30 seconds for your new service to get online when you're deploying a new version.

Ideally, during deployment of a new version the new version should go live and healthy before caddy starts using it (and kills the old container). I've looked at https://github.com/Wowu/docker-rollout and https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy but haven't had time to prioritize it yet.

Docker labels support is available via a plugin https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy

I've been a self-hoster for a while. The adventure started with regular mani-pc manufactured by HP. 32G of RAM, Intel gen 10, and 1T HDD drive. However, as long as it was a great experience at the beginning, with time it became a challenge. My stack was built with portainer and a bunch of docker-compose files. It leads to specific issues: with portainer, you don't own the Compose files, they are living inside your tool, but nowhere on the filesystem or git repo.

As an open-source tool, Portainer makes it easier to deploy, monitor, and secure systems using Docker, Kubernetes, Swarm, and Podman. Everyone can use it, from small companies to big enterprises, by offering user-friendly interface automation, and developer self-service.

I'm running this setup on a mini pc running Intel N100(4core, 6w TDP) with 16G ram using portainer to setup the relevant containers. You can directly do this via docker as well.

We see that both of our containers are working and no restarting issues. So all looks good at first glance. Now we can move to the next step. We could now deploy NTFY container, but I would like to deploy a Portainer. Why?

It's crucial to have an effective access management system that allows you to robustly manage user identities and permissions across your clusters. Although Kubernetes includes an advanced RBAC implementation, this only works within a single cluster. A dedicated Kubernetes management platform such as Rancher or Portainer is required to cohesively configure identities and grant users the multi-cluster access they require.

Check it out https://www.portainer.io/

Portainer is a container management platform that provides a powerful web interface to administer your workloads. It natively supports Kubernetes environments to help you manage your Pods, Deployments, Helm charts, and other cluster resources. Portainer also provides robust RBAC capabilities and an external authentication layer, letting you grant team members access to Kubernetes through Portainer without directly exposing your cluster.

This episode is actually why I started this series in the first place. I am an active Docker user and Docker fan, but I like containers and DevOps topics in general. I am a moderator on the official Docker forums and I see that people often struggle with the installation process of Docker CE or Docker Desktop. Docker Desktop starts a virtual machine, and the GUI is to manage the Docker CE inside the virtual machine even on Linux. Even though I prefer not to use a GUI for creating containers, I admit it can be useful in some situations, but you always need to be ready to use the command line where all the commands are available. In this episode I will use Ansible to install Docker CE in the previously created virtual machine, and I will also install a web-based graphical interface, Portainer.

Portainer

> Any tips on the minimum hardware or VPS's needed to get a small swarm cluster setup?

From my testing, Docker Swarm is very lightweight, uses less memory than both Hashicorp Nomad and lightweight Kubernetes distros (like K3s). Most of the resource requirements will depend on what containers you actually want to run on the nodes.

You might build a cluster from a bunch of Raspberry Pis, some old OptiPlex boxes or laptops, or whatever you have laying around and it's mostly going to be okay. On a practical level, anything with 1-2 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM will be okay for running any actually useful software, like a web server/reverse proxy, some databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB), as well as either something for a back end or some pre-packaged software, like Nextcloud.

So, even 5$/month VPSes are more than suitable, even from some of the more cheap hosts like Hetzner or Contabo (though the latter has a bad rep for limited/no support).

That said, you might also want to look at something like Portainer for a nice web based UI, for administering the cluster more easily, it really helps with discoverability and also gives you redeploy web hooks, to make CI easier: https://www.portainer.io/ (works for both Docker Swarm as well as Kubernetes, except the Kubernetes ingress control was a little bit clunky with Traefik instead of Nginx)