Introduction
This is a cheatsheet for working with docker context to connect remote docker locally. Might help you to work with remote docker without manually SSH to the remote server.
Add Context
$ docker context create my-remote-docker-machine --docker "host=ssh://username@host"
my-remote-docker-machine
Successfully created context "my-remote-docker-machine"
You can also utilize SSH Config file to connect to the remote docker. Especially when you need to define your private key or password.
$ cat ~/.ssh/config
Host my-remote-docker-machine
Hostname host
User username
$ docker context create my-remote-docker-machine --docker "host=ssh://my-remote-docker-machine"
Besides ssh, you can also add your context using tcp protocol if you enable the Docker API.
List All Context
$ docker context ls
NAME DESCRIPTION DOCKER ENDPOINT KUBERNETES ENDPOINT ORCHESTRATOR
default * Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration unix:///var/run/docker.sock swarm
my-remote-docker-machine ssh://username@host
Use Context
$ docker --context my-remote-docker-machine images -q
65dadc9c7fe7
f814fce55133
7a9b6da4328e
33655f17f093
d120da10b040
6d6859d1a42a
c19ae228f069
Set New Context as Default
$ docker context use my-remote-docker-machine
my-remote-docker-machine
Current context is now "my-remote-docker-machine"
$ docker context ls
NAME DESCRIPTION DOCKER ENDPOINT KUBERNETES ENDPOINT ORCHESTRATOR
default Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration unix:///var/run/docker.sock swarm
my-remote-docker-machine * ssh://username@host
See the * is moved from default to my-remote-docker-machine. Now you can use your docker command without --context flag.
Remove Context
$ docker context use default # back to default
$ docker context rm my-remote-docker-machine
my-remote-docker-machine
Conclusion
Using docker context might help to avoid SSH manually to the remote server. But, when it comes to build an image using a remote docker locally, you need to consider how much docker context that will be uploaded/downloaded.
Thank you for reading!
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