moby--moby/docs/extend/plugins.md

Understand Engine plugins

You can extend the capabilities of the Docker Engine by loading third-party plugins. This page explains the types of plugins and provides links to several volume and network plugins for Docker.

Types of plugins

Plugins extend Docker's functionality. They come in specific types. For example, a volume plugin might enable Docker volumes to persist across multiple Docker hosts and a network plugin might provide network plumbing.

Currently Docker supports volume and network driver plugins. In the future it will support additional plugin types.

Installing a plugin

Follow the instructions in the plugin's documentation.

Finding a plugin

The following plugins exist:

• The Blockbridge plugin is a volume plugin that provides access to an extensible set of container-based persistent storage options. It supports single and multi-host Docker environments with features that include tenant isolation, automated provisioning, encryption, secure deletion, snapshots and QoS.

• The Convoy plugin is a volume plugin for a variety of storage back-ends including device mapper and NFS. It's a simple standalone executable written in Go and provides the framework to support vendor-specific extensions such as snapshots, backups and restore.

• The Flocker plugin is a volume plugin which provides multi-host portable volumes for Docker, enabling you to run databases and other stateful containers and move them around across a cluster of machines.

• The GlusterFS plugin is another volume plugin that provides multi-host volumes management for Docker using GlusterFS.

• The Horcrux Volume Plugin allows on-demand, version controlled access to your data. Horcrux is an open-source plugin, written in Go, and supports SCP, Minio and Amazon S3.

• The IPFS Volume Plugin is an open source volume plugin that allows using an ipfs filesystem as a volume.

• The Keywhiz plugin is a plugin that provides credentials and secret management using Keywhiz as a central repository.

• The Netshare plugin is a volume plugin that provides volume management for NFS 3/4, AWS EFS and CIFS file systems.

• The OpenStorage Plugin is a cluster aware volume plugin that provides volume management for file and block storage solutions. It implements a vendor neutral specification for implementing extensions such as CoS, encryption, and snapshots. It has example drivers based on FUSE, NFS, NBD and EBS to name a few.

• The Quobyte Volume Plugin connects Docker to Quobyte's data center file system, a general-purpose scalable and fault-tolerant storage platform.

• The REX-Ray plugin is a volume plugin which is written in Go and provides advanced storage functionality for many platforms including VirtualBox, EC2, Google Compute Engine, OpenStack, and EMC.

• The Contiv Volume Plugin is an open source volume plugin that provides multi-tenant, persistent, distributed storage with intent based consumption using ceph underneath.

• The Contiv Networking is an open source libnetwork plugin to provide infrastructure and security policies for a multi-tenant micro services deployment, while providing an integration to physical network for non-container workload. Contiv Networking implements the remote driver and IPAM APIs available in Docker 1.9 onwards.

• The Weave Network Plugin creates a virtual network that connects your Docker containers - across multiple hosts or clouds and enables automatic discovery of applications. Weave networks are resilient, partition tolerant, secure and work in partially connected networks, and other adverse environments - all configured with delightful simplicity.

• The Kuryr Network Plugin is developed as part of the OpenStack Kuryr project and implements the Docker networking (libnetwork) remote driver API by utilizing Neutron, the OpenStack networking service. It includes an IPAM driver as well.

• The Local Persist Plugin extends the default local driver's functionality by allowing you specify a mountpoint anywhere on the host, which enables the files to always persist, even if the volume is removed via docker volume rm.

Troubleshooting a plugin

If you are having problems with Docker after loading a plugin, ask the authors of the plugin for help. The Docker team may not be able to assist you.

Writing a plugin

If you are interested in writing a plugin for Docker, or seeing how they work under the hood, see the docker plugins reference.