Swarm Workloads

Workloads are what runs on a Swarm: stacks, the services inside them, and the tasks (containers) Swarm schedules for each service.

Page	Use it for
Stacks	Normal app deployment from a Compose file, with the stack’s services managed together. Recommended.
Services	Direct control over a single Swarm service, including raw spec updates.
Tasks	Seeing where each task runs and its state, mostly for troubleshooting.

Stacks

A stack deploys related services together from a Compose file.

Deploy a stack

1. Open Swarm → Stacks and click Create Stack.
2. Pick the Environment: the Swarm manager to deploy through.
3. Enter a stack name and paste your Compose content.
4. Optional: add .env content for variables the Compose file references.
5. Click Create Stack.

Editor shortcuts:

• Use Template — load a saved Arcane template. See Templates.
• Convert from Docker Run — paste a docker run to generate starter Compose and env content. For standalone prep, use the Instance Generator.
• Save as Template — save the editor content as a reusable template.
• Override file — add a compose.override.yaml that Arcane merges with the main file at deploy time, like the Docker CLI.

Deploy options:

• Prune removed services — remove services no longer in the Compose file. Off by default, so a deploy never deletes a service you didn’t drop.
• Send registry authentication — forward your stored registry credentials to the Swarm managers so they can pull private images.
• Resolve images — whether the manager looks up each image tag in the registry and pins the service to its digest (the content hash of one exact image build), so every node runs the same image. Always (default) resolves on every deploy, When changed only for images whose reference changed, and Never skips the lookup.

Note

Arcane prefixes declared resource names with the stack name. Config and secret names also depend on their content, so changes create new objects without modifying Docker’s immutable originals.

Update or remove a stack

Open the stack from Swarm → Stacks, click Edit, change the Compose or .env, and redeploy. To remove, use the stack detail page or row action and confirm.

View a stack’s saved source

View Source shows the Compose and .env (optional) files Arcane saved at deploy. The default source directory is:

/app/data/swarm/sources

Files are organized by environment ID and stack name, e.g. environment env_123 and stack whoami:

/app/data/swarm/sources/env_123/whoami/compose.yaml
/app/data/swarm/sources/env_123/whoami/.env

Stacks are listed by grouping services by their com.docker.stack.namespace label. A stack deployed outside Arcane appears live but has no saved source until Arcane deploys it.

Services

Manage individual services here, including raw spec updates and removal. To create one, open Swarm → Services, click Create Service, fill in the definition, and submit.

Inspect, scale, and roll back a service

The service detail page shows overview data, live logs, tasks, environment and label config, ports and networks, virtual IPs, and storage where present.

• Scale — for replicated services, enter a replica count and click Scale. Global services don’t take replica counts.
• Rollback — server-side rollback to the previous service version, useful after a failed rollout or bad image update.

Tasks

Inspect task state and placement to troubleshoot failed or restarting services. Filter by node, service, or stack. Opening Tasks from the Nodes page selects that node’s tasks.