How to reach docker containers by name instead of IP address? - dns

Question

Is there a way I can reach my docker containers using names instead of ip addresses?
I've heard of pipework and I've seen some dns and hostname type options for docker, but I still am unable to piece everything together.
Thank you for your time.
I'm not sure if this is helpful, but this is what I've done so far:
installed docker container host using docker-machine and the vmwarevsphere driver
started up all the services with docker-compose
I can reach all of the services from any other machine on the network using IP and port
I've added a DNS alias entry to my private network DNS server and it matches the machine name that's used by docker-machine. But the machine always picks up a different IP address when it boots and connects to the network.
I'm just lost as to where to tackle this:
network DNS server
docker-machine hostname
docker container hostname
probably some combination of all of them
I'm probably looking for something similar to this question:
How can let docker use my network router to assign dhcp ip to containers easily instead of pipework?
Any general direction will be awesome...thanks again!

Answer 1

Docker 1.10 has a built in DNS. If your containers are connected to the same user defined network (create a network docker network create my-network and run your container with --net my-network) they can reference each other using the container name. (Docs).
Cool!
One caveat if you are using Docker compose you know that it adds a prefix to your container names, i.e. <project name>_<service name>-#. This makes your container names somewhat more difficult to control, but it might be ok for your use case. You can override the docker compose naming functionality by manually setting the container name in your compose template, but then you wont be able to scale with compose.

Answer 2

Create a new bridge network other than docker0, run your containers inside it and you can reference the containers inside that network by their names.
Docker daemon runs an embedded DNS server to provide automatic service
discovery for containers connected to user-defined networks. Name
resolution requests from the containers are handled first by the
embedded DNS server.
Try this:
docker network create <network name>
docker run --net <network name> --name test busybox nc -l 0.0.0.0:7000
docker run --net <network name> busybox ping test
First, we create a new network. Then, we run a busybox container named test listening on port 7000 (just to keep it running). Finally, we ping the test container by its name and it should work.

Answer 3

EDIT 2018-02-17: Docker may eventually remove the links key from docker-compose, therefore they suggest to use user-defined networks as stated here => https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/#links
Assuming you want to reach the mysql container from the web container of your docker-compose.yml file, such as:
web:
build: .
links:
- mysql
mysqlservice:
image: mysql
You'll be pleased to know that Docker Compose already adds a mysqlservice domain name (in the web container /etc/hosts) which point to the mysql container.
Instead of looking for the mysql container IP address, you can just use the mysqlservice domain name.
If you want to add custom domain names, it's also possible with the extra_hosts parameter.

Answer 4

You might want to try out dnsdock. Looks straight forward and easy(!) to set up. Have a look at http://blog.brunopaz.net/easy-discover-your-docker-containers-with-dnsdock/ and https://github.com/tonistiigi/dnsdock .

Answer 5

If you want out of the box solution, you might want to check for example Kontena. It comes with network overlay technology from Weave and this technology is used to create virtual private LAN networks between services. Thanks to that every service/container can be reached by service_name.kontena.local.

Answer 6

I changed the --net parameter with --network parameter and it runs as expected:
docker network create <network name>
docker run --network <network name> --name <container name> <other container options>
docker run --network <network name> --name <container name> <other container options>

Answer 7

If you are using Docker Compose, and your docker-compose.yml file has a top-level services: block (you are not using the obsolete "version 1" file format), then Compose does all of the required setup automatically. The names underneath services: can be directly used as host names.
version: '3.8'
services:
database: # <-- "database" is a usable hostname
image: postgres
application: # <-- "application" is a usable hostname
build: .
environment:
PGHOST: database # <-- use the "database" hostname
Networking in Compose in the Docker documentation describes this setup further.
These host names only work for connections between containers, in the same Compose file. If you manually declare networks: then the two containers must have some network in common, but the easiest setup is to just not declare networks: at all. These connections will only use the "standard" port (for PostgreSQL, for example, always connect to port 5432); a ports: declaration is not required and is ignored if present.