Docker Machine allows you to provision Docker machines in a variety of environments, including virtual machines that reside on your local system, on cloud providers, or on bare metal servers (physical computers). Docker Machine creates a Docker host, and you use the Docker Engine client as needed to build images and create containers on the host.

To create a virtual machine, you supply Docker Machine with the name of the driver you want use. The driver determines where the virtual machine is created. For example, on a local Mac or Windows system, the driver is typically Oracle VirtualBox. For provisioning physical machines, a generic driver is provided. For cloud providers, Docker Machine supports drivers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean, and many more. The Docker Machine reference includes a complete [list of supported drivers](drivers/index.md).

Since Docker runs on Linux, each VM that Docker Machine provisions relies on a

base operating system. For convenience, there are default base operating

systems. For the Oracle Virtual Box driver, this base operating system is <a href="https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker" target="_blank">boot2docker</a>. For drivers used to connect to cloud providers, the base operating system is Ubuntu 12.04+. You can change this default when you create a machine. The Docker Machine reference includes a complete [list of

supported operating systems](drivers/os-base.md).

For each machine you create, the Docker host address is the IP address of the

Linux VM. This address is assigned by the `docker-machine create` subcommand.

You use the `docker-machine ls` command to list the machines you have created.

The `docker-machine ip <machine-name>` command returns a specific host's IP

address.

Before you can run a `docker` command on a machine, you need to configure your

command-line to point to that machine. The `docker-machine env <machine-name>`

subcommand outputs the configuration command you should use.

For a complete list of `docker-machine` subcommands, see the [Docker Machine subcommand reference](reference/index.md).

Provisioning a host is a complex matter that can fail for a lot of reasons. Your

workstation may have a wide variety of shell, network configuration, VPN, proxy

or firewall issues. There are also reasons from the other end of the chain:

your cloud provider or the network in between.

To help `docker-machine` be as stable as possible, we added a monitoring of

crashes whenever you try to `create` or `upgrade` a host. This will send, over

HTTPS, to Bugsnag some information about your `docker-machine` version, build,

OS, ARCH, the path to your current shell and, the history of the last command as

you could see it with a `--debug` option. This data is sent to help us pinpoint

recurring issues with `docker-machine` and will only be transmitted in the case

of a crash of `docker-machine`.

If you wish to opt out of error reporting, you can create a `no-error-report`

file in your `$HOME/.docker/machine` directory, and Docker Machine will disable

this behavior. e.g.:

$ mkdir -p ~/.docker/machine && touch ~/.docker/machine/no-error-report

Leaving the file empty is fine -- Docker Machine just checks for its presence.

Docker Machine is still in its infancy and under active development. If you need

help, would like to contribute, or simply want to talk about the project with

like-minded individuals, we have a number of open channels for communication.

- To report bugs or file feature requests: please use the [issue tracker on

Github](https://github.com/docker/machine/issues).

- To talk about the project with people in real time: please join the

`#docker-machine` channel on IRC.

- To contribute code or documentation changes: please [submit a pull request on

Github](https://github.com/docker/machine/pulls).

For more information and resources, please visit

[our help page](https://docs.docker.com/project/get-help/).

- Create and run a Docker host on your [local system using VirtualBox](get-started.md)

- Provision multiple Docker hosts [on your cloud provider](get-started-cloud.md)

- <a href="../drivers/" target="_blank">Docker Machine driver reference</a>

- <a href="../reference/" target="_blank">Docker Machine subcommand reference</a>