I’m running a docker-compose stack on Windows (Docker Desktop). The primary service in this stack communicates with an external server to advertise the presence of the child process. When I first start Docker Desktop, and then the stack via the docker-compose command, the primary service immedidately connects to the remote/external server and informs it of availability. When I stop the stack with docker-compose down, everything shuts down as you might expect. However, when I restart the stack, the local containers will not communicate with the external server. There are apparently no firewall, port forwarding, tunneling, or pass-through rule issues. I cannot seem to change any setting to force this communication to occur, but as soon as I restart Docker Desktop (via the Restart option on the system tray icon), my containers will immediately start communicating with the external server again. Once the containers establish communication, it’s a rock solid connection and never drops. But as soon as I take the stack down and put it back up, communication will not happen without restarting Docker Desktop.

Is there any way to find out why this occurring? The script that validates resources and brings the stack up will be run on computers that will likely be unmonitored once deployment is complete, so we can’t just restart Docker Desktop every time the stack restarts, especially given that other processes on that machine might be using Docker Desktop.

Any advice on where to start looking for the source of this issue? I’ve done several google and SO searches and haven’t found an answer that resolves the issue. This did not seem to be an issues the last time our process was developed a deployed a few years ago, so I’m really unsure whether its an issues with my setup or internal to Docker.

Thanks,
Ed