The estimated cost of Docker Enterprise

We begin our brief cost/benefit discussion with the cost side of the equation and starting with the Docker Enterprise platform and licensing.

To run Docker Enterprise, you will need virtual servers for each node, a network to connect them, and some cluster-based storage (NFS usually works great for on-premise cluster storage). Remember, Docker Enterprise can run in the cloud, on-premise, in a VM, or on bare-metal servers—the choice is yours. For cost estimation purposes, plan on six manager nodes with four cores and 16 GB of RAM for managers and Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) nodes. The resources required for worker nodes will depend on the types of workloads you are running on your cluster. For instance, with a Java-based application you typically need a large memory footprint of maybe four cores and 32 GB of RAM per worker node. Whereas with a node-based application, you may have more balance between CPU and memory and can run several applications comfortably with two cores and 16 GB of RAM.

Also, keep in mind a typical starter cluster will have about 10 nodes, because six of the nodes are used for cluster and image management, leaving four nodes to handle workloads. This might seem like a high ratio of overhead-to-workload nodes, but do keep in mind you can probably add hundreds of additional worker nodes without adding any additional overhead.

Docker Enterprise is a commercial product and may be purchased from Docker, Inc. or a Docker-authorized reseller. The following estimated costs are subject to change and are based on publicly available information from Docker's online store. When you are getting serious about Docker Enterprise, you need to contact Docker or an authorized reseller directly for up to date and possibly discounted pricing.

So, for the sake of an example, the following is representative pricing (from https://hub.docker.com/) for common high availability (HA) cluster configurations. Please note that business-day support is from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time, Monday-Friday, and business-critical support is 24 hours/day x 7 days/week x 365 days/year.