When it is appropriate.
WHAT WORKS WELL
Development and testing Ephemeral environments Small deployments with careful storage
WHAT NEEDS CAUTION
Production databases with real data.
WHY
Storage, backups and upgrades need the same rigour as anywhere, and containers encourage treating things as disposable.
WHAT TO NEVER DO
Store data inside the container.
WHY
Removing the container removes the data.
WHAT TO USE
A volume, on storage you understand.
WHAT TO VERIFY
That the volume is where you think.
WHY
A misconfigured mount silently writes into the container.
WHAT TO SET
Memory limits matching the database's configuration.
WHY BOTH
A database configured to use more memory than its container allows is terminated.
WHAT TO BE CAREFUL WITH
Default configurations in official images, which suit development Automatic restarts hiding repeated crashes Upgrades replacing the image without considering data format
WHAT TO DO ABOUT UPGRADES
Read the image's upgrade notes, and back up first.
WHAT TO PLAN
Backups, exactly as for any database.
WHAT TO TEST
Restoring into a new container.
WHEN TO PREFER A MANAGED SERVICE
When you do not want to operate storage and backups yourself.
WHEN TO PREFER A PLAIN SERVER
When predictability matters more than orchestration.
