Image registry

The image registry is a service that allows you to store and retrieve images.

Docker registry

A Docker registry or repository provides storage and versioning for Docker images. Installing a private Docker registry is useful if you don’t want to share your algorithms. Also, a private registry may have security benefits, for example, you can scan your images for vulnerabilities and you can limit the range of IP addresses that the node may access to its server and the private registry.

Note

If you use your own registry, make sure that it conforms to the OCI distribution specification. This specification is supported by all major container registry providers, such as Docker Hub, Harbor, Azure Container Registry and Github container registry.

Harbor

Our preferred solution for hosting a Docker registry is Harbor. Harbor provides access control, a user interface and automated scanning on vulnerabilities.

Docker Hub

Docker itself provides a registry as a turn-key solution on Docker Hub. Instructions for setting it up can be found here: https://hub.docker.com/_/registry.

Note that some features of vantage6, such as timestamp based retrieval of the newest image, or multi-arch images, are not supported by the Docker Hub registry.

Note

If you are using a private docker registry, your nodes need to login to it in order to be able to retrieve the algorithms. You can do this by adding the following to the node configuration file:

private_docker_registries:
  - registry: docker-registry.org
    username: docker-registry-user
    password: docker-registry-password