Running the agent with Docker (deprecated)

Deploy a self-hosted Airplane agent with Docker.
The Docker-based agent has been deprecated - it will still continue to work, but newer features or performance improvements are no longer being added. Docker-based agents do not support the workflow runtime.
We recommend that users switch to one of the other hosting methods.
To follow the installation instructions below, you'll need the following values:
  • YOUR_API_TOKEN: generate a new token by running airplane apikeys create <token name> from the Airplane CLI.
  • YOUR_TEAM_ID: get your team ID via airplane auth info or visit the Team Settings page.

Basic Docker setup
If you're running in an on-premises environment or otherwise need to run the agent on existing infrastructure, the Airplane agent can be run anywhere that supports running a Docker host.
You'll need a host machine to run the agent on, that has a Docker host installed and running.
The agent Docker image is available at us-docker.pkg.dev/airplane-prod/public/agent:1. Below is a one-liner for running the agent in the background—be sure to replace YOUR_API_TOKEN and YOUR_TEAM_ID with the appropriate values.
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docker run --name airplane-agent \
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   -d --restart always \
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   --pull always \
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   -e AP_API_TOKEN=YOUR_API_TOKEN \
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   -e AP_TEAM_ID=YOUR_TEAM_ID \
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   -e AP_LABELS="container-runtime:docker" \
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   -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
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   us-docker.pkg.dev/airplane-prod/public/agent:1
Setting the AP_LABELS environment variable will add the provided labels to the agent for use in run constraints. For details on using labels, see Execute rules & constraints.
That's it! Visit https://app.airplane.dev/agents and verify that your agent appears in the list.
Consider running additional agents—each agent is able to process one task at a time.
  • You can run multiple agents on the same host. Be sure to provide a distinct --name to the docker run command (e.g. --name airplane-agent-0, --name airplane-agent-1). We recommend running no more than 2 agents per CPU core in your host, although you can pack more if your tasks and runbooks are not resource intensive.
  • You can also run multiple hosts.

Cleaning up images to avoid running out of disk space
As Airplane tasks are updated, the Docker agent will download new images over time. The agent doesn't automatically clean up old Docker images, so depending on your usage of Airplane, you may eventually run into disk space issues.
We recommend installing Docuum on your host machine, which regularly cleans up older Docker images to avoid this issue. Here, we provide a sample command for running Docuum in a Docker container here - other methods of installing and running Docuum can be found in the Docuum repo.
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# Change the threshold below based on how much disk space
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# is available on your host machine.
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docker run \
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   --detach \
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   --init \
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   --rm \
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   --name docuum \
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   --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
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   --volume docuum:/root \
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   stephanmisc/docuum --threshold '40 GB'
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