Swarm task states

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Docker lets you create services, which can start tasks. A service is a description of a desired state, and a task does the work. Work is scheduled on swarm nodes in this sequence:

  1. Create a service by using docker service create or the UCP web UI or CLI.
  2. The request goes to a Docker manager node.
  3. The Docker manager node schedules the service to run on particular nodes.
  4. Each service can start multiple tasks.
  5. Each task has a life cycle, with states like NEW, PENDING, and COMPLETE.

Tasks are execution units that run once to completion. When a task stops, it isn’t executed again, but a new task may take its place.

Tasks advance through a number of states until they complete or fail. Tasks are initialized in the NEW state. The task progresses forward through a number of states, and its state doesn’t go backward. For example, a task never goes from COMPLETE to RUNNING.

Tasks go through the states in the following order:

Task state Description
NEW The task was initialized.
PENDING Resources for the task were allocated.
ASSIGNED Docker assigned the task to nodes.
ACCEPTED The task was accepted by a worker node. If a worker node rejects the task, the state changes to REJECTED.
PREPARING Docker is preparing the task.
STARTING Docker is starting the task.
RUNNING The task is executing.
COMPLETE The task exited without an error code.
FAILED The task exited with an error code.
SHUTDOWN Docker requested the task to shut down.
REJECTED The worker node rejected the task.
ORPHANED The node was down for too long.

View task state

Run docker service ps <service-name> to get the state of a task. The CURRENT STATE field shows the task’s state and how long it’s been there.

$ docker service ps webserver
ID                  NAME                IMAGE               NODE                DESIRED STATE       CURRENT STATE            ERROR                              PORTS
owsz0yp6z375        webserver.1         nginx               UbuntuVM            Running             Running 44 seconds ago                                      
j91iahr8s74p         \_ webserver.1     nginx               UbuntuVM            Shutdown            Failed 50 seconds ago    "No such container: webserver.…"   
7dyaszg13mw2         \_ webserver.1     nginx               UbuntuVM            Shutdown            Failed 5 hours ago       "No such container: webserver.…"

Where to go next

swarm, task, service