Docker Cookbook

8.2 Starting a Docker Host on AWS EC2 | 237

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The Amazon Linux AMI also contains 
cloud-init
, which has become the standard
for configuring cloud instances at boot time. This allows you to pass 
user data
at
instance creation. 
cloud-init
parses the content of the user data and executes the
commands. Using the AWS CLI, you can pass some user data to automatically install
Docker. The small downside is that it needs to be base64-encoded.
Create a small bash script with the two commands from earlier:
#!/bin/bash
yum -y install docker
service docker start
Encode this script and pass it to the instance creation command:
$ udata="$(cat docker.sh | base64 )"
$ aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-7b3db00c \
--count 1 \
--instance-type t1.micro \
--key-name cookbook \
--user-data $udata
$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cookbook ec2-user@
$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
With the Docker daemon running, if you wanted to access it
remotely, you would need to set up TLS access (see 
Recipe 4.9
), and
open port 2376 in your security group.
Using this CLI is not Docker-specific. This CLI gives you access to
the complete set of AWS APIs. However, using it to start instances
and install Docker in them significantly streamlines the provision‐
ing of Docker hosts.
See Also
•
Installing the AWS CLI
•
Configuring the AWS CLI
•
Launching an instance via the AWS CLI
238 | Chapter 8: Docker in the Cloud

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8.3 Starting a Docker Host on Google GCE
Problem
You want to start a VM instance on the Google GCE cloud and use it as a Docker
host.