Docker swarm replicas on different nodes

What version of docker are you using? According to this post in 1.13 this kind of problem has been rectified, do take a look: https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/26259#issuecomment-260899732

Hope that answers your question.

Extending VonC answer, and as in your example you are using a compose file, not the cli, you could add max_replicas_per_node: 1, as in

version: '3.8'
...
yourservice:
    deploy:
          replicas: 2
          placement:
            max_replicas_per_node: 1

The compose schema version 3.8 is key here, as there is no support for max_replicas_per_node below 3.8.

This was added in https://github.com/docker/cli/pull/1410

docker/cli PR 1612 seems to resolve issue 26259, and has been released in docker 19.03.

Added new switch --replicas-max-per-node switch to docker service

How to verify it

Create two services and specify --replicas-max-per-node one of them:

docker service create --detach=true --name web1 --replicas 2 nginx
docker service create --detach=true --name web2 --replicas 2 --replicas-max-per-node 1 nginx

See difference on command outputs:

$ docker service ls
ID                  NAME                MODE                REPLICAS               IMAGE               PORTS
0inbv7q148nn        web1                replicated          2/2                    nginx:latest        
9kry59rk4ecr        web2                replicated          1/2 (max 1 per node)   nginx:latest

$ docker service ps --no-trunc web2
ID                          NAME                IMAGE                                                                                  NODE                DESIRED STATE       CURRENT STATE            ERROR                                                     PORTS
bf90bhy72o2ry2pj50xh24cfp   web2.1              nginx:latest@sha256:b543f6d0983fbc25b9874e22f4fe257a567111da96fd1d8f1b44315f1236398c   limint              Running             Running 34 seconds ago                                                             
xedop9dwtilok0r56w4g7h5jm   web2.2              nginx:latest@sha256:b543f6d0983fbc25b9874e22f4fe257a567111da96fd1d8f1b44315f1236398c                       Running             Pending 35 seconds ago   "no suitable node (max replicas per node limit exceed)"   

The error message would be:

no suitable node (max replicas per node limit exceed)

Examples from Sebastiaan van Stijn:

Create a service with max 2 replicas:

docker service create --replicas=2 --replicas-max-per-node=2 --name test nginx:alpine
docker service inspect --format '{{.Spec.TaskTemplate.Placement.MaxReplicas}}' test
2

Update the service (max replicas should keep its value)

docker service update --replicas=1 test
docker service inspect --format '{{.Spec.TaskTemplate.Placement.MaxReplicas}}' test
2

Update the max replicas to 1:

docker service update --replicas-max-per-node=1 test
docker service inspect --format '{{.Spec.TaskTemplate.Placement.MaxReplicas}}' test
1

And reset to 0:

docker service update --replicas-max-per-node=0 test
docker service inspect --format '{{.Spec.TaskTemplate.Placement.MaxReplicas}}' test
0