Select a storage driver

Ideally, very little data is written to a container's writable layer, and you use Docker volumes to write data. However, some workloads require you to be able to write to the container's writable layer. This is where storage drivers come in.

Docker supports several storage drivers, using a pluggable architecture. The storage driver controls how images and containers are stored and managed on your Docker host. After you have read the storage driver overview, the next step is to choose the best storage driver for your workloads. Use the storage driver with the best overall performance and stability in the most usual scenarios.

The Docker Engine provides the following storage drivers on Linux:

The Docker Engine has a prioritized list of which storage driver to use if no storage driver is explicitly configured, assuming that the storage driver meets the prerequisites, and automatically selects a compatible storage driver. You can see the order in the source code for Docker Engine 27.2.1.

Some storage drivers require you to use a specific format for the backing filesystem. If you have external requirements to use a specific backing filesystem, this may limit your choices. See Supported backing filesystems.

After you have narrowed down which storage drivers you can choose from, your choice is determined by the characteristics of your workload and the level of stability you need. See Other considerations for help in making the final decision.

Supported storage drivers per Linux distribution

Note

Modifying the storage driver by editing the daemon configuration file isn't supported on Docker Desktop. Only the default overlay2 driver or the containerd storage are supported. The following table is also not applicable for the Docker Engine in rootless mode. For the drivers available in rootless mode, see the Rootless mode documentation.

Your operating system and kernel may not support every storage driver. For example, btrfs is only supported if your system uses btrfs as storage. In general, the following configurations work on recent versions of the Linux distribution:

When in doubt, the best all-around configuration is to use a modern Linux distribution with a kernel that supports the overlay2 storage driver, and to use Docker volumes for write-heavy workloads instead of relying on writing data to the container's writable layer.

The vfs storage driver is usually not the best choice, and primarily intended for debugging purposes in situations where no other storage-driver is supported. Before using the vfs storage driver, be sure to read about its performance and storage characteristics and limitations.

The recommendations in the table above are known to work for a large number of users. If you use a recommended configuration and find a reproducible issue, it's likely to be fixed very quickly. If the driver that you want to use is not recommended according to this table, you can run it at your own risk. You can and should still report any issues you run into. However, such issues have a lower priority than issues encountered when using a recommended configuration.

Depending on your Linux distribution, other storage-drivers, such as btrfs may be available. These storage drivers can have advantages for specific use-cases, but may require additional set-up or maintenance, which make them not recommended for common scenarios. Refer to the documentation for those storage drivers for details.

Supported backing filesystems

With regard to Docker, the backing filesystem is the filesystem where /var/lib/docker/ is located. Some storage drivers only work with specific backing filesystems.

Other considerations

Suitability for your workload

Among other things, each storage driver has its own performance characteristics that make it more or less suitable for different workloads. Consider the following generalizations:

• overlay2 operates at the file level rather than the block level. This uses memory more efficiently, but the container's writable layer may grow quite large in write-heavy workloads.
• Block-level storage drivers such as btrfs, and zfs perform better for write-heavy workloads (though not as well as Docker volumes).
• btrfs and zfs require a lot of memory.
• zfs is a good choice for high-density workloads such as PaaS.

More information about performance, suitability, and best practices is available in the documentation for each storage driver.

Shared storage systems and the storage driver

If you use SAN, NAS, hardware RAID, or other shared storage systems, those systems may provide high availability, increased performance, thin provisioning, deduplication, and compression. In many cases, Docker can work on top of these storage systems, but Docker doesn't closely integrate with them.

Each Docker storage driver is based on a Linux filesystem or volume manager. Be sure to follow existing best practices for operating your storage driver (filesystem or volume manager) on top of your shared storage system. For example, if using the ZFS storage driver on top of a shared storage system, be sure to follow best practices for operating ZFS filesystems on top of that specific shared storage system.

Stability

For some users, stability is more important than performance. Though Docker considers all of the storage drivers mentioned here to be stable, some are newer and are still under active development. In general, overlay2 provides the highest stability.

Test with your own workloads

You can test Docker's performance when running your own workloads on different storage drivers. Make sure to use equivalent hardware and workloads to match production conditions, so you can see which storage driver offers the best overall performance.

Check your current storage driver

The detailed documentation for each individual storage driver details all of the set-up steps to use a given storage driver.

To see what storage driver Docker is currently using, use docker info and look for the Storage Driver line:

$ docker info

Containers: 0
Images: 0
Storage Driver: overlay2
 Backing Filesystem: xfs
<...>

To change the storage driver, see the specific instructions for the new storage driver. Some drivers require additional configuration, including configuration to physical or logical disks on the Docker host.

Important

When you change the storage driver, any existing images and containers become inaccessible. This is because their layers can't be used by the new storage driver. If you revert your changes, you can access the old images and containers again, but any that you pulled or created using the new driver are then inaccessible.

Related information

• About images, containers, and storage drivers
• overlay2 storage driver in practice
• btrfs storage driver in practice
• zfs storage driver in practice