Hosting your own images.
WHY RUN ONE
Control over where images live No transfer charges to a third party Faster pulls, if it is near your hosts Privacy for proprietary images
WHAT IT REQUIRES
Storage, which grows Authentication Encryption Backups Cleanup
WHAT TO PLAN FOR
Growth, since every build produces an image.
WHAT TO IMPLEMENT
Retention: how many versions per repository, and for how long.
WHY
Without it, storage grows without limit.
WHAT TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT DELETING
Images still deployed somewhere.
WHAT TO CHECK BEFORE ANY CLEANUP
What is actually running.
WHAT TO SECURE
Access, per repository where possible The storage behind it
WHAT TO AVOID
An unauthenticated registry reachable from anywhere.
WHY
It becomes a distribution point for other people's images.
WHAT A PULL-THROUGH MIRROR PROVIDES
A local cache of public images.
WHY THAT HELPS HERE
It removes repeated large downloads over an expensive link.
WHAT TO MONITOR
Storage Pull failures Authentication failures
WHAT TO BACK UP
The registry's storage, and its configuration.
