Swarm task states

Table of contents

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.
  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.
READY The worker node is ready to start the task
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.
REMOVE The task is not terminal but the associated service was removed or scaled down.

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.…"

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