Docker Swarm Cheat Sheet

Commands and concepts for initializing a Docker Swarm cluster, deploying stacks, and managing services and nodes.

2 PagesIntermediateFeb 20, 2026

Cluster Setup

Initialize and join a Swarm cluster.

bash

docker swarm init --advertise-addr <MANAGER_IP>   # Init on first managerdocker swarm join-token worker                    # Get worker join commanddocker swarm join-token manager                   # Get manager join commanddocker node ls                                     # List cluster nodesdocker node promote <NODE>                         # Promote worker to managerdocker node update --availability drain <NODE>     # Drain a node for maintenance

Service Management

Create and control services on the Swarm.

bash

docker service create --name web --replicas 3 -p 80:80 nginxdocker service ls                       # List servicesdocker service ps web                   # List tasks/replicas for a servicedocker service scale web=5              # Scale replicasdocker service update --image nginx:1.25 web  # Rolling updatedocker service logs web                 # View service logsdocker service rm web                   # Remove a service

Stack Deploy File

Deploy a multi-service application as a stack.

yaml

version: "3.8"services:  web:    image: myorg/web:1.4    deploy:      replicas: 3      update_config:        parallelism: 1        delay: 10s      restart_policy:        condition: on-failure    ports:      - "80:80"    networks:      - overlay-netnetworks:  overlay-net:    driver: overlay

Key Concepts

How Swarm organizes work across the cluster.

Manager node- Maintains cluster state via Raft consensus and schedules tasks (odd number recommended, e.g. 3 or 5)
Worker node- Executes tasks assigned by managers; does not participate in Raft by default
Task- A single running container instance that is part of a service
Overlay network- A multi-host virtual network letting containers on different nodes communicate
Secrets- Encrypted data (docker secret create) mounted into containers at /run/secrets
Rolling update- Deploy updates gradually per update_config parallelism/delay to avoid downtime

Stack Commands

Deploying and inspecting stacks.

bash

docker stack deploy -c docker-stack.yml myapp   # Deploy a stackdocker stack services myapp                     # List stack servicesdocker stack ps myapp                           # List stack tasksdocker stack rm myapp                           # Remove a stack

Pro Tip

Run managers on an odd number of nodes (3 or 5) so Raft consensus can tolerate failures without a split-brain; never run just 2 managers.

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