Portainer Documentation

Edge Stacks allow you to deploy applications to multiple environments from a single interface, regardless of the current state of those environments. The Edge Stacks page provides a centralized view of all stacks deployed across your devices, showing:

• Name: The identifier for the stack.
• Deployment Status: A visual representation of the deployment progress across environments, including states such as acknowledged, images pre-pulled, deployments received, failed, or a generic status. You can hover over the status bars for granular details.
• Creation Date: When the stack was first established.

To use this feature, you must first enable Edge Compute in your settings.

Portainer provides a graphical user interface to manage container environments (Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, Podman, and Azure ACI) without requiring CLI usage or manual YAML/manifest management.

There are two primary editions:

1. Portainer Business Edition (BE): Designed for organizations. Includes advanced features such as:

   • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
   • Registry management
   • Dedicated professional support
   • Note: Requires a license key.

2. Portainer Community Edition (CE): A free, open-source version intended for home users and hobbyists. It lacks some of the enterprise-grade features found in the Business Edition.

The Swarm menu is a specialized section in Portainer that is only visible and accessible when Portainer is connected to a Docker Swarm environment. It serves as a centralized management hub for Swarm-specific resources, allowing you to:

• View Environment Details: Access information about the Swarm environment and its constituent nodes.
• Monitor Cluster Information: View high-level cluster status and health.
• Visualize the Cluster: Use the Cluster Visualizer to understand the topology and distribution of services and nodes.
• Configure Settings: Manage environment-specific configurations and settings.
• Manage Registries: Configure container registries used within the Swarm cluster.

The Azure ACI dashboard provides a high-level summary of your Azure Azure Container Instances (ACI) environment. It visualizes the hierarchical components of your application through summary tiles, specifically showing the counts for:

• Subscriptions: The number of Azure subscriptions connected.
• Resource Groups: The number of resource groups within those subscriptions.
• Container Instances: The total number of container instances making up your Azure application.

This dashboard is used to quickly assess the scale and composition of your ACI environment at a glance.

Portainer settings are divided into general application settings and environment-specific settings. Use the 'Settings' section to manage configurations that apply to the Portainer instance globally.

For settings specific to a particular environment (such as Docker, Docker Swarm, or Kubernetes), refer to the dedicated host, swarm, or cluster documentation sections instead of the general settings.

The Images section in Portainer allows you to manage the images used to build containers within an environment. You can view an overview of all available images, including their ID, usage status, tags, size, and creation date.

Key capabilities available through the Images interface include:

• Pulling images from Docker Hub or any configured registry.
• Building new images.
• Importing or Exporting images.
• Pruning dangling and unused images to reclaim disk space.

Portainer allows you to define and manage various types of policies for Docker, Swarm, or Podman environments to control access, security, and resource lifecycle. The available policy types include:

• RBAC Policies: Control Role-Based Access Control settings.
• Security Policies: Define security configurations for the environment.
• Setup Policies: Manage environment setup and configuration.
• Registry Policies: Control how container registries are accessed and used.
• Cleanup Policies: Automate the removal of unused resources.

Portainer offers advanced orchestration management for Kubernetes environments. Key capabilities include:

• Applications: Deploy applications via web forms, Kubernetes manifests, or Helm charts. Manage their lifecycle (inspect, edit, remove) and attach/detach volumes.
• Namespaces: Create, manage, and control access to Kubernetes namespaces.
• Networking: Manage Kubernetes Services and Ingresses (manually or via manifests).
• Configurations: Manage Kubernetes ConfigMaps and Secrets.
• Storage: Inspect and edit Kubernetes Volumes.
• Cluster Management: Setup clusters, inspect nodes, manage registries, and configure security constraints and policies.
• Advanced Resources: Manage Custom Resources, Cron Jobs, Jobs, Service Accounts, and RBAC (Roles/Cluster Roles).

In a Kubernetes environment, Portainer allows you to manage the volumes deployed by your applications. You can manage three primary storage abstractions:

1. Persistent Volume Claims (PVC): Requests for storage by users/applications.
2. Persistent Volumes (PV): The actual storage resources in the cluster.
3. Storage Classes: Definitions of different types of storage available in the cluster.

To deploy new volumes or storage classes, you can use the Create from code feature in Portainer to apply a Kubernetes manifest or a Helm chart.