Hey everyone, I hope this isn't a silly question! I've got two HP EliteDesk minis: one with 4 CPU cores and the other with 2, both running Ubuntu server and Docker, and each equipped with 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSDs. I'm currently using Portainer on the 4 CPU machine to manage both devices, but they show up separately. Is there a way to combine their resources to act as one single machine? Thanks for your help!
4 Answers
Thanks everyone for the feedback! For now, I think I'll leave things as they are. Right now I'm trying to get a Traefik/Cloudflare instance up and running. That’s a whole other challenge! Cheers!
Nope, you generally can't merge them as one machine. It's better to keep them separate for troubleshooting and management reasons. There are tools you could use like Docker Swarm or Proxmox to orchestrate workloads across both machines, but they won’t combine them into one unit. You'll be able to utilize both, but they'll still remain distinct machines.
Unfortunately, there isn't a straightforward way to merge two machines into one in Docker. Each machine operates independently, and combining their resources just isn't possible. This is partly due to the fact that shared state between machines presents significant challenges in computing. Each instance runs on its own hardware, and there's no simple way to manage how resources like RAM and CPU are allocated. Tools like Docker Swarm or Kubernetes let you run apps across multiple machines, but they won't merge them into a single entity either.
If you're looking to load balance traffic between the two machines, I'd recommend checking out Docker Swarm. It does a pretty good job of allowing applications to run across multiple hosts. If you're feeling adventurous, Kubernetes might be worth checking out as well!
Sounds like a tough task! If you run into issues with Traefik or need some advice, feel free to ask!