Storing data Docker volumes

Overview

Teaching: 15 min
Exercises: 15 min

Questions

• Why should I use Docker volumes?

• Where can I store and access data?

Objectives

• Explain why volumes are necessary.

• Manage host and Docker volumes

• Why should I use docker volumes instead of host volumes?

Docker containers are intended to be ephemeral which means it should be possible to regularly stop, delete and replace them without loosing anything important.

This means that in contrast to a physical server where all storage is persistent you must carefully consider where you application writes to. Despite the inconvenience this is a good thing.

Persistent data should be stored in a docker volume, which is an abstraction of a chunk of a file-system.

What happens if you run this?

docker run -it my-omeropy-image /opt/omero/web/venv3/bin/omero login -s workshop.openmicroscopy.org
docker run -it my-omeropy-image /opt/omero/web/venv3/bin/omero user list

The second command prompts you to login again. It is a completely separate Docker container, so the login state from the first command is not passed to the second container.

Docker named volumes

Create a new volume for storing the OMERO login state:

docker volume create omero-session-vol

omero-session-vol

List volumes:

docker volume ls

DRIVER              VOLUME NAME
local               omero-session-vol

When you run an image you can mount a docker volume into the container using the --mount argument. Mount omero-session-vol on /home/omero/omero-folder:

docker run -it --mount source=omero-session-vol,target=/home/omero/omero-folder my-omeropy-image /opt/omero/web/venv3/bin/omero login -s workshop.openmicroscopy.org

Could not access session dir: /home/omero/omero-folder/sessions

The volume defaults to being owned by root. You can fix this by creating the mountpoint with the correct permissions in the Dockerfile

RUN useradd omero
WORKDIR /home/omero
USER omero
RUN mkdir /home/omero/omero-folder

Rebuild, and run. The session information should now be kept between container runs:

docker run -it --mount source=omero-session-vol,destination=/home/omero/omero-folder my-omeropy-image /opt/omero/web/venv3/bin/omero login -s workshop.openmicroscopy.org
docker run -it --mount source=omero-session-vol,destination=/home/omero/omero-folder my-omeropy-image /opt/omero/web/venv3/bin/omero user list

-v and --mount

--mount is a new argument introduced in version 17.06. Docker recommend using --mount instead of -v, though both methods are mostly equivalent.

Other volume options

Volumes can be mounted with several other options, e.g. readonly:

--mount source=omero-session-vol,destination=/home/omero/omero-folder,readonly

See the documentation on volumes for more information.

Bind mounts

Docker allows you to mount a local path on the host directly into the container. For example, you could use this to mount a directory of test files into a container for testing. However, this makes the container dependent on the file structure of the host, and also requires manually dealing with user permissions. Named volumes are easier to use.

Example or mounting your local home directory into a container:

docker run -it --mount type=bind,source="$HOME",destination=/external-home,readonly rockylinux:9 ls -l /external-home/

Volume management

• List volumes: docker volume ls
• Delete a volume: docker volume rm VOLUME-NAME
• Delete all unattached volumes: docker volume prune

Key Points