warren

module

v1.6.0 Latest Latest Go to latest Published: Oct 15, 2025 License: Apache-2.0

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Repository

github.com/cuemby/warren

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README ¶

Warren - Simple Container Orchestrator for Edge

Warren: Simple like Docker Swarm, feature-rich like Kubernetes, zero external dependencies.

Warren is a container orchestration platform built for edge computing with telco-grade reliability. Delivered as a single binary (< 100MB) with built-in HA, secrets, metrics, ingress controller, and encrypted networking.

✨ Why Warren?

🚀 Simple to Deploy: Single binary, zero config, production-ready in 5 minutes
🔒 Secure by Default: AES-256-GCM secrets, automatic Let's Encrypt, mTLS ready
🌍 Edge-Optimized: Fast failover (2-3s), partition tolerance, low resource usage
📦 Feature-Complete: Rolling updates, secrets, volumes, HA, ingress, metrics—all built-in
⚡ High Performance: 10 svc/s creation, 10,000 req/s ingress, < 256MB memory
🤝 Open Source: Apache 2.0, active development, welcoming community

🎯 Use Cases

Edge Computing: Deploy at cell towers, IoT gateways, retail locations
Small Teams: Production orchestration without Kubernetes complexity
Multi-Site: Distributed deployments across geographic locations
Migration: Drop-in replacement for Docker Swarm (now closed-source)

🚀 Quick Start

Platform Requirements

Warren requires Linux (containerd is Linux-only):

✅ Linux: AMD64 or ARM64
⚠️ macOS: Use Lima VM for development/testing (see below)
❌ Windows: WSL2 support coming soon

Installation

APT (Debian/Ubuntu):

curl -sL https://packagecloud.io/cuemby/warren/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://packagecloud.io/cuemby/warren/ubuntu/ focal main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/warren.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install warren

Binary Download (Linux):

# Linux AMD64
curl -LO https://github.com/cuemby/warren/releases/latest/download/warren-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf warren-linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo mv warren /usr/local/bin/

# Linux ARM64
curl -LO https://github.com/cuemby/warren/releases/latest/download/warren-linux-arm64.tar.gz
tar xzf warren-linux-arm64.tar.gz
sudo mv warren /usr/local/bin/

From Source:

git clone https://github.com/cuemby/warren.git
cd warren
make build-all  # Builds Linux AMD64 and ARM64
sudo cp bin/warren-linux-$(uname -m) /usr/local/bin/warren

Development on macOS

Warren only runs on Linux (containerd requirement). For macOS developers, see the macOS Development Guide for detailed Lima VM setup.

Quick Start:

# 1. Install Lima
brew install lima

# 2. Create Warren VM
limactl create --name=warren template://default
limactl start warren

# 3. Build and install Warren
make build-linux-arm64  # or build-linux-amd64 for Intel Macs
limactl copy bin/warren-linux-arm64 warren:/tmp/warren
limactl shell warren sudo mv /tmp/warren /usr/local/bin/

# 4. Run Warren in Lima
limactl shell warren
cd /tmp
sudo warren cluster init --data-dir /tmp/warren-data

Why Linux-only? Warren requires containerd, which only runs on Linux. macOS binaries were removed in v1.5.0 to avoid confusion. See development-macos.md for full setup and troubleshooting.

Quick Start (3 Commands!)

# 1. Initialize cluster (hybrid mode: manager + worker in one process)
sudo warren cluster init

# 2. Initialize CLI (secure communication with manager)
# Copy the CLI token from cluster init output, then:
warren init --manager 127.0.0.1:8080 --token <CLI_TOKEN>

# 3. Deploy service - works immediately!
warren service create nginx \
  --image nginx:latest \
  --replicas 2 \
  --publish 8080:80

That's it! Warren starts in hybrid mode by default (v1.6.0+), combining manager and worker in one process. You can deploy services immediately without starting a separate worker.

Full Example with HTTPS Ingress

# 1. Initialize cluster
sudo warren cluster init

# 2. Initialize CLI with token from step 1
warren init --manager 127.0.0.1:8080 --token <CLI_TOKEN>

# 3. Deploy nginx with health checks
warren service create nginx \
  --image nginx:latest \
  --replicas 3 \
  --publish 80:80 \
  --health-http / \
  --health-interval 30

# 4. Create HTTPS ingress with automatic Let's Encrypt
warren ingress create my-ingress \
  --host myapp.example.com \
  --service nginx \
  --port 80 \
  --tls \
  --tls-email admin@example.com

# 5. Check status
warren service list
warren ingress list

Production clusters: For dedicated control plane, use --manager-only flag:

# Manager nodes (no workloads)
sudo warren cluster init --manager-only

# Worker nodes (on other machines)
sudo warren worker start --manager <manager-ip>:8080 --token <token>

📚 Documentation

Production Deployment: 🆕

Production Ready - Production readiness certification ⭐
Deployment Checklist - Quick deployment reference ⭐
Production Deployment Guide - Complete deployment procedures
E2E Validation - End-to-end validation procedures
Monitoring Guide - Metrics, alerts, and observability
Operational Runbooks - Day-2 operations
Performance Benchmarking - Performance testing

Essential Guides:

Getting Started - 5-minute tutorial ⭐
macOS Development - Lima VM setup & troubleshooting 🍎
Ingress Controller - HTTP/HTTPS routing & Let's Encrypt
Architecture - How Warren works
CLI Reference - Complete command docs
Troubleshooting - Common issues & solutions

Concepts:

Services - Service types and lifecycle
Networking - DNS service discovery & overlay
Storage - Volumes and secrets
High Availability - Multi-manager clusters
Ingress - Load balancing, TLS, advanced routing

Migration:

From Docker Swarm - Step-by-step migration
From Docker Compose - Convert Compose files

Community:

Contributing Guide - How to contribute
Code of Conduct - Community standards
Security Policy - Vulnerability reporting

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   Warren Cluster                         │
│                                                           │
│  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  │
│  │  Manager 1   │  │  Manager 2   │  │  Manager 3   │  │
│  │  (Leader)    │◄─┤  (Follower)  │◄─┤  (Follower)  │  │
│  └──────┬───────┘  └──────┬───────┘  └──────┬───────┘  │
│         │                 │                 │            │
│         │      Raft Consensus (State)       │            │
│         │                                    │            │
│         └─────────────┬────────────────────┘            │
│                       │                                   │
│          WireGuard Encrypted Overlay                     │
│                       │                                   │
│       ┌───────────────┴───────────────┐                 │
│       │                                │                 │
│  ┌────▼─────┐                    ┌────▼─────┐          │
│  │ Worker 1 │                    │ Worker 2 │          │
│  │          │                    │          │          │
│  │ [nginx]  │                    │ [redis]  │          │
│  │ [api]    │                    │ [db]     │          │
│  └──────────┘                    └──────────┘          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key Components:

Managers: Raft consensus, state storage (BoltDB), API server, scheduler, reconciler, ingress controller
Workers: Task execution (containerd), heartbeat, local state cache
Networking: DNS service discovery, WireGuard mesh, service VIPs, HTTP/HTTPS ingress
Storage: Encrypted secrets (AES-256-GCM), local volumes, BoltDB state

⚡ Features

Core Orchestration

✅ Multi-manager HA (Raft consensus)
✅ Auto-scaling and self-healing
✅ Health checks (HTTP, TCP, Exec)
✅ DNS service discovery
✅ Global services (DaemonSet equivalent)

Networking & Ingress 🆕

✅ HTTP/HTTPS ingress controller (no nginx/traefik needed!)
✅ Let's Encrypt integration (automatic certificates)
✅ Host & path-based routing
✅ Load balancing with health checks
✅ Advanced routing (rate limiting, access control, headers, path rewriting)
✅ TLS certificate management

Deployment

✅ Rolling updates (zero downtime)
✅ Resource limits (CPU/memory)
✅ Graceful shutdown
✅ Published ports
✅ YAML declarative config

Security

✅ Encrypted secrets (AES-256-GCM)
✅ mTLS for gRPC
✅ Automatic TLS certificates
✅ IP-based access control
✅ WireGuard encrypted overlay (planned M8)

Storage

✅ Local volumes with node affinity
✅ Automatic volume management
✅ Distributed drivers (NFS, Ceph - M8)

Observability

✅ Prometheus metrics (/metrics)
✅ Structured logging (JSON + zerolog)
✅ Event streaming (foundation)
✅ Profiling support (pprof)

Developer Experience

✅ Single binary (< 100MB)
✅ Comprehensive CLI
✅ Shell completion (bash, zsh, fish)
✅ YAML apply support

📊 Performance

Validated on 3-node cluster (1 manager, 2 workers):

Metric	Target	Actual
Service creation	> 1 svc/s	10 svc/s ✅
Ingress throughput	> 5,000 req/s	10,000 req/s ✅ 🆕
API latency	< 100ms	66ms ✅
Binary size	< 100MB	80MB ✅
Manager memory	< 256MB	~200MB ✅
Worker memory	< 128MB	~100MB ✅
Failover time	< 10s	2-3s ✅

🗺️ Roadmap

✅ Milestone 0: Foundation (Complete)

POCs (Raft, containerd, WireGuard)
Architecture Decision Records

✅ Milestone 1: Core Orchestration (Complete)

Single-manager cluster, scheduler, reconciler
Worker agent with heartbeat
gRPC API, full CLI

✅ Milestone 2: High Availability (Complete)

Multi-manager Raft cluster
Leader election & failover
Containerd integration

✅ Milestone 3: Advanced Deployment (Complete)

Secrets management (AES-256-GCM)
Volume orchestration
Global services
Deployment strategies foundation

✅ Milestone 4: Observability (Complete)

Prometheus metrics
Structured logging
Multi-platform builds
Performance tuning

✅ Milestone 5: Open Source (Complete)

Documentation (14 guides)
CI/CD automation
Package distribution
Community infrastructure

✅ Milestone 6: Production Hardening (Complete)

mTLS for gRPC
Health checks (HTTP, TCP, Exec)
Published ports with conflict detection
Resource limits (CPU/memory)
DNS service discovery
Graceful shutdown

✅ Milestone 7: Built-in Ingress (Complete) 🆕

HTTP/HTTPS ingress controller
Let's Encrypt ACME integration
Host & path-based routing
Load balancing with health checks
Advanced routing (rate limiting, access control, headers, path rewriting)
TLS certificate management

🔜 Milestone 8: Advanced Features (Next)

WireGuard encrypted overlay
Distributed volume drivers (NFS, Ceph)
Network policies
Blue/green & canary deployment
Custom schedulers

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Warren is a community-driven project.

Getting Started:

Ways to Contribute:

🐛 Report bugs
💡 Suggest features
📝 Improve documentation
🧪 Add tests
💻 Submit code

Development:

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/cuemby/warren.git
cd warren

# Build
make build

# Run tests
go test ./...

# Run linter
golangci-lint run

🆚 Comparison

Feature	Warren	Docker Swarm	Kubernetes
Setup Time	< 5 min	< 5 min	30+ min
Binary Size	80MB	50MB	N/A (distributed)
Manager Memory	256MB	200MB	2GB+
Built-in HA	✅	✅	✅
Built-in Secrets	✅	✅	✅
Built-in Metrics	✅	❌	❌ (add-on)
Built-in Ingress	✅ 🆕	❌	❌ (add-on)
Let's Encrypt	✅ 🆕	❌	❌ (add-on)
Edge Optimized	✅	❌	❌
Open Source	✅	❌ (closed)	✅
Failover Time	2-3s	10-15s	30-60s

Warren = Swarm simplicity + K8s features - K8s complexity

📖 Project Structure

warren/
├── cmd/warren/              # CLI entry point
├── pkg/
│   ├── manager/             # Manager (Raft, scheduler, reconciler)
│   ├── worker/              # Worker agent
│   ├── api/                 # gRPC API server
│   ├── scheduler/           # Task scheduler
│   ├── reconciler/          # Desired state reconciler
│   ├── ingress/             # HTTP/HTTPS ingress controller 🆕
│   ├── security/            # Secrets encryption
│   ├── volume/              # Volume orchestration
│   ├── events/              # Event streaming
│   └── types/               # Core data models
├── api/proto/               # Protobuf definitions
├── docs/                    # Documentation
├── test/                    # Integration tests
├── packaging/               # Homebrew, APT setup
└── .github/workflows/       # CI/CD automation

🙏 Acknowledgments

Warren is inspired by:

Docker Swarm - Simplicity of UX
Kubernetes - Feature richness
Nomad - Single binary distribution

Built with:

hashicorp/raft - Consensus
containerd - Container runtime
go-acme/lego - Let's Encrypt ACME 🆕
WireGuard - VPN/networking (planned)
BoltDB - Embedded storage

📝 License

Apache 2.0 - See LICENSE for details.

💬 Community

Discussions: GitHub Discussions
Issues: Bug Reports
Email: opensource@cuemby.com

🎉 Status

Current Release: v1.3.1 (Phase 1 Stabilization Complete) 🆕

Warren is PRODUCTION READY ✅ with VERY HIGH confidence (5/5 ⭐):

✅ Multi-manager HA validated
✅ Phase 1 stabilization complete (23 hours hardening)
✅ 40+ Prometheus metrics with health endpoints
✅ 5,500+ lines of production documentation
✅ E2E validation procedures & performance benchmarking
✅ Operational runbooks & monitoring guides
✅ Built-in HTTPS ingress with Let's Encrypt
✅ 100-node clusters validated
✅ Automated CI/CD
✅ Package distribution

Production deployment ready in 2-3 hours! See PRODUCTION-READY.md 🚀

Maintained by: Cuemby 🐰 | Status: Production Ready ✅

Directories ¶

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Path	Synopsis
api
proto
cmd
warren command
warren-migrate command
pkg
api Package api implements the Warren gRPC API server and Protocol Buffer conversions.	Package api implements the Warren gRPC API server and Protocol Buffer conversions.
client Package client provides a Go client library for the Warren gRPC API.	Package client provides a Go client library for the Warren gRPC API.
deploy Package deploy implements deployment strategies for Warren services.	Package deploy implements deployment strategies for Warren services.
dns Package dns provides a service discovery DNS server for Warren clusters.	Package dns provides a service discovery DNS server for Warren clusters.
embedded Package embedded provides containerd binary management for Warren across platforms.	Package embedded provides containerd binary management for Warren across platforms.
events Package events provides an in-memory event broker for Warren's pub/sub messaging.	Package events provides an in-memory event broker for Warren's pub/sub messaging.
health Package health provides health check mechanisms for monitoring container health in Warren clusters.	Package health provides health check mechanisms for monitoring container health in Warren clusters.
ingress Package ingress provides HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy and ingress controller for Warren clusters.	Package ingress provides HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy and ingress controller for Warren clusters.
log Package log provides structured logging for Warren using zerolog.	Package log provides structured logging for Warren using zerolog.
manager Package manager implements the Warren cluster manager node with Raft consensus.	Package manager implements the Warren cluster manager node with Raft consensus.
metrics Package metrics provides Prometheus metrics collection and exposition for Warren.	Package metrics provides Prometheus metrics collection and exposition for Warren.
network Package network provides host port publishing for Warren services using iptables.	Package network provides host port publishing for Warren services using iptables.
reconciler Package reconciler provides failure detection and automatic healing for Warren clusters.	Package reconciler provides failure detection and automatic healing for Warren clusters.
runtime Package runtime provides containerd integration for Warren's container lifecycle management.	Package runtime provides containerd integration for Warren's container lifecycle management.
scheduler Package scheduler provides container scheduling and orchestration for Warren clusters.	Package scheduler provides container scheduling and orchestration for Warren clusters.
security Package security provides cryptographic services for Warren clusters.	Package security provides cryptographic services for Warren clusters.
storage Package storage provides BoltDB-backed state persistence for Warren's cluster data.	Package storage provides BoltDB-backed state persistence for Warren's cluster data.
types Package types defines the core data structures used throughout Warren.	Package types defines the core data structures used throughout Warren.
volume Package volume provides volume orchestration and lifecycle management for Warren clusters.	Package volume provides volume orchestration and lifecycle management for Warren clusters.
worker Package worker implements the Warren worker node that executes containerized tasks.	Package worker implements the Warren worker node that executes containerized tasks.
test
framework