Get started creating Ethereum development and test single and multi-node clusters rapidly using Docker. Please note that this project is meant for playing with a private Ethereum network, and doesn't follow best practices for network access & security for production workloads.

We provide full Ethereum test nodes (using the Ethereum Go client with all APIs enabled by default as well as a monitoring dashboard provided via Netstats.

docker-compose up -d

By default this will create:

• 1 Ethereum bootstrapped container
• 1 Ethereum container (which connects to the bootstrapped container on launch)
• 1 Netstats container (with a Web UI to view activity in the cluster)

To access the Netstats dashboard

open http://localhost:3000/

Note that you need to update the docker-compose.yml to use another port (i.e. 80) for exposing the Netstats dashboard.

docker-compose scale eth=3

Will scale the number of Ethereum nodes upwards (replace 3 with however many nodes you prefer). These nodes will connect to the P2P network (via the bootstrap node) by default.

This basically provisions an Ubuntu VM on Azure with Docker installed and the abovementioned containers running. You can then view the Netstats dashboard through the VM's DNS name, and/or connect to the Ethereum nodes through RPC to access the console. You can also just ssh into the VM to get access to the full environment and scale up/down the number of nodes.

As part of the bootstrapping process we bootstrap 10 Ethereum accounts for use pre-filled with 20 Ether for use in transactions by default.

If you want to change the amount of Ether for those accounts See files/genesis.json.

If you want to start mining or stop mining you need to connect to the node via:

docker exec -it ethereumdocker_eth_1 geth attach ipc://root/.ethereum/devchain/geth.ipc

Replace ethereumdocker_eth_1 with the container name you wish to connect to.

Once you're connected to the geth console, you can then run the following command to start mining:

> miner.start(1)

This will run the miner process with 1 thread. The mining rewards will be put in the account for the coinbase, which is the first account configured in the genesis file.

After that you can start sending transactions:

> personal.unlockAccount(eth.accounts[0])
Unlock account 0x....
Passphrase: <empty passphrase for all pre-configured accounts>
> eth.sendTransaction({from: eth.accounts[0], to: eth.accounts[1], value: web3.toWei(5, "ether")}) 

You could monitor the mining process and the pending transactions through the Netstats dashboard.

You can also consider using the MetaMask browser plugin to manage accounts and transactions. The plugin also works nicely with online smart contract compilers for deploying your own contracts.