Service Discovery

Configuring hostname for a container

By default, a container will have a hostname assigned to the name of a service in the domain .weave.local. Names in the .weave.local domain are searchable by DNS lookup requests within a cluster.

It is possible to configure a different name using hostname field for a service configuration, for example:

version: "3.7"
services:
echo:
# change default 'echo.weave.local' to the alternative:
hostname: echo-server.weave.local
network_mode: bridge
restart: unless-stopped
image: ealen/echo-server

Now all other containers within a cluster may discover IP address(es) of all containers for the example echo service by echo-server or echo-server.weave.local host name.

Name server address

In general, it is not required to explicitly configure DNS server IP address for processes in containers. However, there are exceptions, for example HAProxy resolvers setting requires it explicitly configured. This can be done by passing OVERNODE_BRIDGE_IP environment variable as an environment variable or as a command line argument for a container. For example:

version: "3.7"
services:
haproxy:
image: haproxy:alpine
network_mode: bridge
init: true
ports:
- 443:443
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
- NAMESERVER=${OVERNODE_BRIDGE_IP}:53
...

Unique host name

If the same service is placed for multiple nodes and you would like to have unique host names for each container of the same service, you can use OVERNODE_ID environment variable in the hostname value, for example:

version: "3.7"
services:
echo:
# container on the node 1 will have 'echo-1.weave.local' hostname
hostname: echo-${OVERNODE_ID}.weave.local
network_mode: bridge
restart: unless-stopped
image: ealen/echo-server

Inspecting DNS records

To do DNS lookup in the .weave.local domain, use dns-lookup command, for example:

> sudo overnode dns-lookup echo-server

To list all the available DNS records, use status command:

> sudo overnode status --dns

Managing DNS records

dns-add and dns-remove commands let you to manipulate DNS records in the .weave.local domain from a command line, for example:

> sudo overnode dns-add --ips "172.16.1.1,172.16.1.2" --name hostA
> sudo overnode dns-remove --ips "10.78.1.1,10.78.1.2" --name hostA
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