distribution/docs/mirror.md

Registry as a pull through cache

A v2 Registry can be configured as a pull through cache. In this mode a Registry responds to all normal docker pull requests but stores all content locally.

Why?

If you have multiple instances of Docker running in your environment (e.g., multiple physical or virtual machines, all running the Docker daemon), each time one of them requires an image that it doesn’t have it will go out to the internet and fetch it from the public Docker registry. By running a local registry mirror, you can keep most of the image fetch traffic on your local network.

How does it work?

The first time you request an image from your local registry mirror, it pulls the image from the public Docker registry and stores it locally before handing it back to you. On subsequent requests, the local registry mirror is able to serve the image from its own storage.

What if the content changes on the Hub?

When a pull is attempted with a tag, the Registry will check the remote to ensure if it has the latest version of the requested content. If it doesn't it will fetch the latest content and cache it.

What about my disk?

In environments with high churn rates, stale data can build up in the cache. When running as a pull through cache the Registry will periodically remove old content to save disk space. Subsequent requests for removed content will cause a remote fetch and local re-caching.

To ensure best performance and guarantee correctness the Registry cache should be configured to use the filesystem driver for storage.

Running a Registry as a pull through cache

The easiest way to run a registry as a pull through cache is to run the official Registry pull through cache official image.

Multiple registry caches can be deployed over the same back-end. A single registry cache will ensure that concurrent requests do not pull duplicate data, but this property will not hold true for a registry cache cluster.

Configuring the cache

To configure a Registry to run as a pull through cache, the addition of a proxy section is required to the config file.

In order to access private images on the Docker Hub the username and password can be supplied.

proxy:
  remoteurl: https://registry-1.docker.io
  username: [username]
  password: [password]

Configuring the Docker daemon

You will need to pass the --registry-mirror option to your Docker daemon on startup:

docker --registry-mirror=https://<my-docker-mirror-host> -d

For example, if your mirror is serving on http://10.0.0.2:5000, you would run:

docker --registry-mirror=https://10.0.0.2:5000 -d

NOTE: Depending on your local host setup, you may be able to add the --registry-mirror options to the DOCKER_OPTS variable in /etc/default/ docker.