Deploy Flower on Multiple Machines with Docker Compose¶
This guide will help you set up a Flower project on multiple machines using Docker Compose.
You will learn how to run the Flower client and server components on two separate
machines, with Flower configured to use TLS encryption and persist SuperLink state
across restarts. A server consists of a SuperLink and a ServerApp
. For more details
about the Flower architecture, refer to the Flower Architecture
explainer page.
This guide assumes you have completed the Quickstart with Docker Compose tutorial. It is highly recommended that you follow and understand the contents of that tutorial before proceeding with this guide.
Prerequisites¶
Before you begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
The
flwr
CLI is installed locally.The Docker daemon is running on your local machine and the remote machine.
Docker Compose V2 is installed on both your local machine and the remote machine.
You can connect to the remote machine from your local machine.
Ports
9091
and9093
are accessible on the remote machine.
Note
The guide uses the examples/quickstart-sklearn-tabular
example as an example project.
If your project has a different name or location, please remember to adjust the commands/paths accordingly.
Step 1: Set Up¶
Clone the Flower repository and change to the
distributed
directory:$ git clone --depth=1 --branch v1.13.1 https://github.com/adap/flower.git $ cd flower/src/docker/distributed
Get the IP address from the remote machine and save it for later.
Use the
certs.yml
Compose file to generate your own self-signed certificates. If you have certificates, you can continue with Step 2.Important
These certificates should be used only for development purposes.
For production environments, you may have to use dedicated services to obtain your certificates.
First, set the environment variable
SUPERLINK_IP
with the IP address from the remote machine. For example, if the IP is192.168.2.33
, execute:$ export SUPERLINK_IP=192.168.2.33
Next, generate the self-signed certificates:
$ docker compose -f certs.yml -f ../complete/certs.yml run --rm --build gen-certs
Step 2: Copy the Server Compose Files¶
Use the method that works best for you to copy the server
directory, the
certificates, and the pyproject.toml
file of your Flower project to the remote
machine.
For example, you can use scp
to copy the directories:
$ scp -r ./server \
./superlink-certificates \
../../../examples/quickstart-sklearn-tabular/pyproject.toml remote:~/distributed
Step 3: Start the Flower Server Components¶
Log into the remote machine using ssh
and run the following command to start the
SuperLink and ServerApp
services:
1 $ ssh <your-remote-machine>
2 # In your remote machine
3 $ cd <path-to-``distributed``-directory>
4 $ export PROJECT_DIR=../
5 $ docker compose -f server/compose.yml up --build -d
Note
The path to the PROJECT_DIR
containing the pyproject.toml
file should be
relative to the location of the server compose.yml
file.
Note
When working with Docker Compose on Linux, you may need to create the state
directory first and change its ownership to ensure proper access and permissions.
After exporting the PROJECT_DIR
(after line 4), run the following commands:
$ mkdir server/state
$ sudo chown -R 49999:49999 server/state
For more information, consult the following page: Persist the State of the SuperLink.
Go back to your terminal on your local machine.
Step 4: Start the Flower Client Components¶
On your local machine, run the following command to start the client components:
# In the `docker/distributed` directory
$ export PROJECT_DIR=../../../../examples/quickstart-sklearn-tabular
$ docker compose -f client/compose.yml up --build -d
Note
The path to the PROJECT_DIR
containing the pyproject.toml
file should be
relative to the location of the client compose.yml
file.
Step 5: Run Your Flower Project¶
Specify the remote SuperLink IP addresses and the path to the root certificate in the
[tool.flwr.federations.remote-deployment]
table in the pyproject.toml
file.
Here, we have named our remote federation remote-deployment
:
[tool.flwr.federations.remote-deployment]
address = "192.168.2.33:9093"
root-certificates = "../../src/docker/distributed/superlink-certificates/ca.crt"
Note
The path of the root-certificates
should be relative to the location of the
pyproject.toml
file.
Run the project and follow the ServerApp
logs:
$ flwr run ../../../examples/quickstart-sklearn-tabular remote-deployment --stream
That’s it! With these steps, you’ve set up Flower on two separate machines and are ready to start using it.
Step 6: Clean Up¶
Shut down the Flower client components:
# In the `docker/distributed` directory
$ docker compose -f client/compose.yml down
Shut down the Flower server components and delete the SuperLink state:
$ ssh <your-remote-machine>
$ cd <path-to-``distributed``-directory>
$ docker compose -f server/compose.yml down -v