Docker Desktop and Hyper-V.

My aim was to run docker destkop on my host machine and accessing that docker instance from the Hyper-V machine that i have running on the same host machine. Here are the steps i followed. On Windows 10 Pro

On the host

Docker

• Install Docker Destkop on the host from https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop. Probably you will be asked to install the WSL2 new kernel. Just do it!
• Restart as needed :P

Add the network connection

• Search on the menu for "View network connections" and check what are the existing interfaces
• Add a new network interface on Hyper-V Manager (Virtual Switch Manager->New Virtual Network Switch) and select "Internal" as "Connection Type". Leave everything as default, name it e.g. "Internal network"
• Always on the manager open the guest vm "Settings" and "Add a new Hardware" selecting "Network Adapter"
• Select the "Internal network" virtual switch and leave it as is

Setup the network configuration

• Search on the menu for "View network connections" and right click on the one just added to open the properties
• Open the "Internet protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and set the following (this is a likely unused address). This will be the static address of your host machine inside the "Internal network"
  • Check "Use the following IP Address"
  • IP Address: 192.168.4.1
  • Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Install the proxy for docker

• Start "Docker Desktop" and open the settings (the wheel on left top)
• In "General" check the "Expose daemon on blah..blah 2375"
• Apply and restart

• Open a command line as adminstrator and run the following. This will install a proxy for docker, exposed on all addresses

  docker run -d --restart=always -p 23750:2375 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock alpine/socat tcp-listen:2375,fork,reuseaddr unix-connect:/var/run/docker.sock

On the guest machine

• Start the virtual machine (actually for me was a Windows 10 "unregistered" instance)

Setup the network

• Search on the menu for "View network connections" and right click on the one just added to open the properties. Will be the one without internet connection
• Open the "Internet protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and set the following (this is a likely unused address). This will be the static address of your guest machine inside the "Internal network"
  • Check "Use the following IP Address"
  • IP Address: 192.168.4.2
  • Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Install Python

• Download and install Python https://www.python.org/downloads/
• Search for "Edit the system environment variables" and add the python's path if not present double clicking on the "PATH" variable, adding the following
  • C:\Users[YourUserName\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python[PythonVersion]
  • C:\Users[YourUserName\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python[PythonVersion]\Scripts
• Add a new variable DOCKER_HOST containing "tcp://192.168.4.1:23750"

• Open a command line and check if ptyhon is installed running

  python

• Check if pip is installed running

  pip -V

• If it is not, download get-pip.py to a folder on your computer.

• Open a command prompt and navigate to the folder containing the get-pip.py installer.

• Run the following command and check again

  python get-pip.py

Install Docker

• Then run

  pip install docker docker-compose

• Should then download the docker executable from https://github.com/StefanScherer/docker-cli-builder/releases/ inside the C:\Users[YourUserName\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python[PythonVersion]\Scripts directory

• Now you can verify the installation running

  docker ps

If you like you can install the lovely Portainer, a really nice control panel for docker:

docker run -d -p 3040:9000 --name portainer --restart=always -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer

Last modified on: February 08, 2021