Show HN: Simple REST server for running docker containers on a remote machine
github.com
github.com
P.S. docker can do what you desire by connecting to a remote docker daemon (see the -H flag).
My use-case was a bit different...
I am running Lambda functions on AWS that on some rules needed to run containers in specific geographical locations Amazon didn't have data centers, like in Israel.
Defining docker-machine (as you mentioned) requires some work. Also it's not easily reproducible if I need to reinstall the machine and many other minor offsets.
To be honest, I heard about Portainer after I had my DockerServer running, but it has a lot of UI functionality I will never use and it's way heavier.
DockerServer is the lightest wrapper there is for running docker containers from remote over simple HTTP(S) and also I got A+ score on LGTM :)