Docker container running Mesos cluster and running other docker containers on cluster (using Marathon)

Question

I'm just starting off with Mesos, Docker and Marathon but I can't find anywhere where this specific question is answered. I want to set up a Mesos cluster running on Docker - there are a couple of internet resources to do this, but then I want to run Docker containers on top of Mesos itself. This would then mean Docker containers running inside other Docker containers.

Is there a problem with this? It doesn't intuitively seem right somehow but would seem like it would be really handy to do so. Ideally I want to run Mesos cluster (with Marathon, Chronos etc.) and then run Hadoop within Docker containers on top of that. Is this possible or a standard way of doing things? Any other suggestions as to what good practice is would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

You should be able to run it, taking care of some issues when running the mesos (with Docker) containers, like running in privileged mode. Take a look to jpetazzo/dind to see how you can install and run docker in docker. Then you can setup mesos in that container to have one container with mesos and docker installed.

There are some references over the Internet similar to what you want to do. Check this article and this project that I think you will find very interesting.

Answer 2

There are definitely people running Mesos in docker containers, but you'll need to use privileged mode and set up some volumes if you want mesos to access the outer docker binary (see this thread ).

Current biggest caveat: don't name your mesos-slave containers "mesos-*" or MESOS-2016 will bite you. See epic MESOS-2115 for other remaining issues related to running mesos-slave in docker containers.