29 engineers on Hacker News describe using Docker Swarm first-hand: 13 endorse it, 7 regret it, 0 are mixed.
“Using it in prod and also for my personal homelab needs - works pretty well!”
endorse · production · KronisLV · 2025-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We are using it in production for 1000s of Hosts very reliably, it's a great piece of technology!”
endorse · production · nik736 · 2024-11-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We are happily running on Docker Swarm in production now, and don't see that changing in the foreseeable future.”
endorse · production · 2 yr · glonq · 2024-11-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've seen both Docker Compose and Docker Swarm be used in production with good results”
endorse · production · KronisLV · 2024-11-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Docker swarm mode is far more capable and Docker swarm mode stacks already share most of the schema with docker compose.”
endorse · personal · chipdart · 2024-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been at a company running swarm in prod for a few years... I can't say I'd pick it again, nor would I recommend it for anyone else.”
regret · production · hn_user82179 · 2023-09-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my problem now that we switched to docker swarm is that docker compose commands are not available anymore.”
regret · production · xiekomb · 2023-06-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been self-hosting web apps with Docker Swarm and Traefik for a few years now... this setup was pretty robust”
endorse · personal · 3 yr · notpushkin · 2022-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have Swarm clusters running in production too, and am planning on deploying dozens more this year. Swarm is great”
endorse · production · GordonS · 2021-12-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Docker Swarm has been an excellent "middle step" for two different teams I've worked on.”
endorse · production · hamiltont · 2021-08-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Using Docker Swarm as an alternative to K8s in prod has been incredibly helpful for us as a growing startup.”
endorse · production · stewartmcgown · 2021-07-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use Docker Swarm (basically multi-node Compose) in production, and am also really happy with it.”
endorse · production · GordonS · 2020-12-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use Docker Swarm (technically "Swarm Mode") in production, and I'm really happy with it - it's so easy to configure and operate”
endorse · production · GordonS · 2020-12-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we are happy that we decided to go with docker swarm.”
endorse · production · nurgasemetey · 2020-10-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm not sure swarm ever got stable enough to use in prod; I migrated our stuff from swarm to k8s a couple years ago due to similar issues.”
regret · production · physicles · 2020-08-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our only issues are with the swarm networking, not Docker itself.”
regret · production · yjftsjthsd-h · 2020-06-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“docker swarm still has a lot of glitches with its overlay network. Rolling upgrades would leave stale network entries and its impossible to reproduce.”
regret · production · t_sawyer · 2020-05-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Devs only care that they're deploying to a swarm not any of the details of how that swarm exists in prod.”
endorse · production · Spivak · 2020-04-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My company tried using Swarm 2-3 years ago and ran into the problem that it didn't actually work. Containers would just go missing from the network.”
regret · production · jamougha · 2019-01-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“docker-swarm is buggy, genuine production issues are routinely closed with WONTFIX resolution.”
regret · personal · atemerev · 2016-11-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I deployed it alongside RStudio as browser IDEs in docker swarm.”
neutral · production · bionsystem · 2026-07-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We switched some of our stack from k8s and swarm to Fargate, and API Gateway (Lambda).”
neutral · production · politelemon · 2022-08-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we migrated Derek away from Docker Swarm and onto a new bare-metal host on Equinix Metal”
neutral · production · alexellisuk · 2021-10-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it used only slightly more resources than Docker Swarm”
neutral · personal · KronisLV · 2021-03-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Sworm for orchestrations and compose for local.”
neutral · production · majkinetor · 2019-05-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We already own and maintain docker swarm setup we just run jenkins/jenkins agents on it.”
neutral · production · dominotw · 2017-12-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We we choose Swarm: Docker is a relatively new tech and while its adoption grows it has not yet the maturity”
neutral · production · parisk · 2016-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“That's what we use in the docker swarm image: https://github.com/docker/swarm-library-image”
neutral · production · vieux · 2015-07-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?