# Container Lifetime & Persistent Data

> Markdown source of <https://docs.calebsargeant.com/computing/docker/container-lifetime/>.

- Containers are usually immuitable and ephemeral
- "immutable infrastructure": Only re-deploy containers, never change
- This is the ideal scenario, but what about databases or unique data?
- DOcker gives us features to ensure these "seperation of concerns"
- This is known as persistent data
- Two ways: Volumes and Bind Mounts
- Volumes: make special location outside of container UFS
- Bind Mounts: link container path to host path

## Data Volumes

- VOLUME command in Dockerfile

## Bind Mounting

- Maps a host file or directory to a container file or directory
- Basically just two locations pointing to the same file(s)
- Again, skip UFS, and host files overwrite any in container
- Can't use in Dockerfile, must be at `container run`
- `... run -v /Users/caleb/stuff:/path/container`