A year ago, at DockerCon 2014, we announced a Docker VM Extension for Docker, which makes deployment of Docker engine and containers to Linux VMs practical.

Today, we are releasing a brand new version of Docker VM Extension with some very cool new features like Docker Compose support, Docker Hub/Registry authentication support. With this new version we are also deprecating the existing Docker Extension.

If you are not familiar with what the VM Extensions are, please read this article.

You can read the User Guide of the new Docker Extension to find out how to use it and deploy to the Virtual Machines.

 

New Features

• Docker Hub integration: the Docker engine installed can now sign in to a Docker Registry or Docker Hub with specified credentials.
• Docker Compose support: the extension will create the predefined set of containers on Docker using docker-compose.
• Advanced Configuration: You can now pass an arbitrary list of command line arguments to the Docker daemon started on the Virtual Machine.

 

Deprecation Plan

• Old extension is: MSOpenTech.Extensions.DockerExtension
• New extension is: Microsoft.Azure.Extensions.DockerExtension

These two extensions are entirely different and existing deployment scripts/templates should be migrated to use the new extension. Here is the deprecation plan for the old extension:

• The old extension will be removed from the system on Dec 1st, 2015.
• New deployments of the old extension are expected to fail after this date.
• Existing Virtual Machines with the old extension deployed will keep working.

 

Migration Guide

Users of the old Docker Extension are highly recommended to migrate to the new one as soon as possible.

If you have been using azure vm docker create command line tool, please update the version of Azure CLI to v0.9.5+ and you will be transparently using the new Docker Extension.

If you have been using Azure REST API or Azure Resource Manager templates, please read the User Guide of the new Docker Extension to learn more about the configuration schema. The schema of the new extension has slightly changed and contains breaking changes. You can find example ARM templates here and here.

 

Resources

• Docker VM Extension User Guide
• Source code for Docker VM Extension on GitHub
• Other Azure VM Extensions and Features

Please ask us questions and give feedback about how you liked the new Docker Extension on GitHub.

Ahmet Alp Balkan (@ahmetalpbalkan)
Software Engineer, Azure Compute