Cross container communication with Docker

Question

An application server is running as one Docker container and database running in another container. IP address of the database server is obtained as:

sudo docker inspect -f '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' db

Setting up JDBC resource in the application server to point to the database gives "java.net.ConnectException".

Linking containers is not an option since that only works on the same host.

How do I ensure that IP address of the database container is visible to the application server container?

Answer 1

If you want private networking between docker containers on remote hosts you can use weave to setup an overlay network between docker containers. If you don't need a private network just expose the ports using the -p switch and configure the addresses of the host machine as the destination IP in the required docker container.

Answer 2

One simple way to solve this would be using Weave. It allows you to create many application-specific networks that can span multiple hosts as well as datacenters. It also has a very neat DNS-based service discovery mechanism.

I should disclaim, I am one of Weave engineering team.