How to install Portainer

Portainer

Portainer is a useful GUI tool for interfacing with Docker. It runs as a container stack, and communicates directly with Docker itself.

Portainer particularly shines when managing a Docker Swarm.

Docker Swarm Mode

First, Create a Docker Swarm.

Install and deploy Community Edition

First, download the latest stack file to somewhere on your manager node that will persist between reboots (i.e. DON’T use /tmp, as the file will be autoremoved).

For example:

mkdir -p ~/Projects/portainer
cd ~/Projects/portainer
curl -L https://downloads.portainer.io/ce2-16/portainer-agent-stack.yml -o portainer-agent-stack.yml

Update the stack file to use latest instead of whatever version is current (e.g. 2.16.2).

For example:

version: '3.2'

services:
  agent:
    image: portainer/agent:latest
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - /var/lib/docker/volumes:/var/lib/docker/volumes
    networks:
      - agent_network
    deploy:
      mode: global
      placement:
        constraints: [node.platform.os == linux]

  portainer:
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:latest
    command: -H tcp://tasks.agent:9001 --tlsskipverify
    ports:
      - "9443:9443"
      - "9000:9000"
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - portainer_data:/data
    networks:
      - agent_network
    deploy:
      mode: replicated
      replicas: 1
      placement:
        constraints: [node.role == manager]

networks:
  agent_network:
    driver: overlay
    attachable: true

volumes:
  portainer_data:

Once you have a stack file, deploy the stack to your swarm from a manager node using:

docker stack deploy -c portainer-agent-stack.yml portainer

You should now be able to visit any node in your docker swarm on port 9000 or 9443 (http and https respectively) to open portainer.

What next?

Using Portainer and GitHub for Continuous Deployment