Scaling a Docker Swarm Service

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Scaling a Docker Swarm Service

For the last six months, the Acme Anvil Corporation has been migrating some of their bare metal infrastructure to Docker containers. A schism has developed between the members of your team on whether to use Docker Swarm or Kubernetes. To settle the dispute, your manager has decided to create a series of challenges. You have been tasked with setting up a Docker swarm with 5 nodes: 2 masters and 3 workers. The masters are to be configured to act only as masters. Next, you will create an httpd service with 3 replicas. Finally, you will scale the service up to 5 replicas and then down to 2.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 20, 2025

Duration

1h 30m

Challenge

Create a Swarm
Create a swarm with 2 masters and 3 worker nodes.

Initilize the swarm.
```
docker swarm init
```
Use the join command to add the 3 worker nodes.
```
docker swarm join --token TOKEN IP_ADDRESS:2377
```
Generate the master token.
```
docker swarm join-token manager
```
Challenge

Drain the Masters
Set the availability to drain for Master1.
```
docker node update --availability drain MASTER1
```
Set the availability to drain for Master2.
```
docker node update --availability drain MASTER2
```

Challenge

Create a Service

Create a service with 3 replicas.

docker service create --name httpd -p 80:80 --replicas 3 httpd

Challenge

Scale the Service up to 5 Replicas
Scale the httpd service up to 5 replicas.
```
docker service scale httpd=5
```
Challenge

Scale the Service Down to 2 Replicas
Scale the httpd service down to 2 replicas.
```
docker service scale httpd=2
```

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