Running copies of the same multi-container app with Docker Compose

You can re-use your docker compose template by specifying the project name (which defaults to the directory name):

$ docker-compose --project-name inst1 up -d
Creating inst1_web_1

$ docker-compose --project-name inst2 up -d
Creating inst2_web_1

You could also scale up the container instances within a project:

$ docker-compose --project-name inst2 scale web=5
Creating and starting 2 ... done
Creating and starting 3 ... done
Creating and starting 4 ... done
Creating and starting 5 ... done

There should now be 6 containers running:

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                     NAMES
5e4ab4cebacf        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   43 seconds ago      Up 42 seconds       0.0.0.0:32772->8080/tcp   inst2_web_2
ced61f9ac2db        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   43 seconds ago      Up 42 seconds       0.0.0.0:32773->8080/tcp   inst2_web_5
efb1ef13147c        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   43 seconds ago      Up 42 seconds       0.0.0.0:32771->8080/tcp   inst2_web_4
58e524da3473        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   43 seconds ago      Up 42 seconds       0.0.0.0:32770->8080/tcp   inst2_web_3
0f58c3c3b0ed        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:32769->8080/tcp   inst2_web_1
377e3e5b03e4        tomcat:8.0          "catalina.sh run"   2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes        0.0.0.0:32768->8080/tcp   inst1_web_1