docker service scale

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Description

Scale one or multiple replicated services

API 1.24+ The client and daemon API must both be at least 1.24 to use this command. Use the docker version command on the client to check your client and daemon API versions.

Usage

docker service scale SERVICE=REPLICAS [SERVICE=REPLICAS...]

Options

Name, shorthand	Default	Description
`--detach , -d`	`true`	API 1.29+ Exit immediately instead of waiting for the service to converge

Parent command

Command	Description
docker service	Manage services

Command	Description
docker service create	Create a new service
docker service inspect	Display detailed information on one or more services
docker service logs	Fetch the logs of a service or task
docker service ls	List services
docker service ps	List the tasks of one or more services
docker service rm	Remove one or more services
docker service rollback	Revert changes to a service’s configuration
docker service scale	Scale one or multiple replicated services
docker service update	Update a service

Extended description

The scale command enables you to scale one or more replicated services either up or down to the desired number of replicas. This command cannot be applied on services which are global mode. The command will return immediately, but the actual scaling of the service may take some time. To stop all replicas of a service while keeping the service active in the swarm you can set the scale to 0.

Examples

Scale a single service

The following command scales the “frontend” service to 50 tasks.

$ docker service scale frontend=50

frontend scaled to 50

The following command tries to scale a global service to 10 tasks and returns an error.

$ docker service create --mode global --name backend backend:latest

b4g08uwuairexjub6ome6usqh

$ docker service scale backend=10

backend: scale can only be used with replicated mode

Directly afterwards, run docker service ls, to see the actual number of replicas.

$ docker service ls --filter name=frontend

ID            NAME      MODE        REPLICAS  IMAGE
3pr5mlvu3fh9  frontend  replicated  15/50     nginx:alpine

You can also scale a service using the docker service update command. The following commands are equivalent:

$ docker service scale frontend=50
$ docker service update --replicas=50 frontend

Scale multiple services

The docker service scale command allows you to set the desired number of tasks for multiple services at once. The following example scales both the backend and frontend services:

$ docker service scale backend=3 frontend=5

backend scaled to 3
frontend scaled to 5

$ docker service ls

ID            NAME      MODE        REPLICAS  IMAGE
3pr5mlvu3fh9  frontend  replicated  5/5       nginx:alpine
74nzcxxjv6fq  backend   replicated  3/3       redis:3.0.6