I have been struggling while trying to build a fabric 2.0 network with organizations spread in multiple hosts. The official documentation explains how to deploy two organizations (org1 and org2) using docker, and using configtxlator tool to add new orgs and peers.
The issue here is that in all documentation examples, organizations run in the same docker-engine host, which misses the whole point of distributed systems. Recently I found this blog post that endorses everything I am struggling with:
https://medium.com/@wahabjawed/hyperledger-fabric-on-multiple-hosts-a33b08ef24f
In this post, the author recommends using docker-swarm to create an overlay network that creates a distributed network among multiple Docker daemon hosts.
However, this post is from 2018, and I am wondering if this is still the best solution available? Or if Kubernetes, nowadays, would be the go for choice to create this overlay network?
ps: this network I am building is for academic purposes and research only, related to my PhD. studies.
Yes, you can use docker-swarm to deploy the network. docker-swarm is quite easy when compared to kubernetes. Since you mentioned that it is for academic purpose and research only then docker-swarm is fine.
Or you if want to deploy the production-grade hyperledger fabric you can use open source tool BAF, Blockchain Automation Framework which is an automation framework for rapidly and consistently deploying production-ready DLT platforms to cloud infrastructure.