What's the easiest way to spawn a cluster of docker containers?

Question

For example elasticsearch, apache spark, hadoop, kafka ... all benefit from running a cluster of machines with some common config between all of them.

What's the equivalent of a Dockerfile but for clusters?

Answer 1

I think that you are looking for Docker swarm

To create a swarm cluster you only need to have Docker on each machine and they have to be on the same network.

You can describe services on a Compose file and deploy it on a swarm. Example

If you want a more powerful cluster abstraction, but more cluster administration duties and complexity, you should try to set up a Kubernetes cluster and install services using Helm