Get started with multi-host networking (Engine)

Get started with multi-host networking

This article uses an example to explain the basics of creating a multi-host network. Docker Engine supports multi-host networking out-of-the-box through the overlay network driver. Unlike bridge networks, overlay networks require some pre-existing conditions before you can create one. These conditions are:

• Access to a key-value store. Docker supports Consul, Etcd, and ZooKeeper (Distributed store) key-value stores.
• A cluster of hosts with connectivity to the key-value store.
• A properly configured Engine daemon on each host in the cluster.
• Hosts within the cluster must have unique hostnames because the key-value store uses the hostnames to identify cluster members.

Though Docker Machine and Docker Swarm are not mandatory to experience Docker multi-host networking, this example uses them to illustrate h