What are the Different Types of Mounts in Docker?

Docker is an open-source application that offers isolation among the user’s applications and their host machines and containerized applications. It helps in creating, deploying, and managing application containers on the OS. Containers are the running instance of the Docker images and users can mount columns, repositories, and files.

This write-up will provide detailed information about the different types of mounts in Docker.

Types of Mounts in Docker

In Docker, there are three types of mount storage, such as:

Volume Mount
Bind Mount.
tmpfs Mount

Let’s check out the above-listed types one by one!

Volume Mount

Volume is the preferred mechanism to preserve the data produced by Docker containers and is also used by it. Moreover, volumes are better than preserving data inside the container’s writable layer. Volume doesn’t maximize the size of the Docker containers by utilizing it.

Volume mounts have multiple advantages, some of which are listed below:

Easily recoverable through backups.
While mounting it, it required a volume name rather than paths.
Volumes are created while creating containers.
APIs and CLIs are used for communicating with Docker volumes.
Volume stored in /var/lib/docker/volumes

Bind Mount

Bind mounts are dependent on the host machine’s directory structure and OS. However, volumes are fully managed by Docker.

The bind mount also has some stunning advantages:

While mounting, it is essential to specify the path to a host machine.
A mount folder is created when the host machine does not contain the folder.
Bind mount can be stored anywhere on a host machine.
The performance of the bind mount is good however containers depend on the filesystem of the host machine.

tmpfs Mount

Sharing files between the host machine and containers, the volumes and bind mounts are used. Users can preserve data even after the container is paused or stopped. However, the tmpfs mount is used when developers create containers with tmpfs mount and files are created outside of the container’s writable layer. Moreover, the tmpfs mount is temporary and only persists in the OS memory. Therefore, the container stops working, then the tmpfs mount is removed.

The tmpfs mount has some key features, which are listed below:

tmpfs mounts are used for storing sensitive data or information.
It can be used for storing the secret keys.

That’s all! We have described the different types of mounts in Docker.

Conclusion

Docker has three types of mounts, such as Bind mount, Volume mount, and tmpfs mount. The Volume is better than preserving data inside the container. The Bind mounts rely on the host machine directory structure and OS. While the tmpfs mount is used for creating containers and files are created outside of the writable layer of containers. This article described the Docker’s mounts types.