Docker and Macbook Pro

[Starfyre]

Does anyone use Docker (https://www.docker.com/) with Macbook Pro? Is 256GB SSD enough for it? I have not yet bought a computer yet, but am interested in using it on my new development machine.

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

Does anyone use Docker (https://www.docker.com/) with Macbook Pro? Is 256GB SSD enough for it? I have not yet bought a computer yet, but am interested in using it on my new development machine.

Well obviously it depends on the size of your offline music/video collection and amount of dockers you want to store but 256GB should be enough space IMHO. Computational power should be enough.

However you must know that Docker cannot be run natively on macOS contrary to Linux. What happens is that a Linux VM gets fired and docker is run inside it. It's not that bad but this is not exactly the same experience one gets in Linux. So maybe read about implications of this difference (worse battery life and significant amount of memory committed to the VM to name a few) before committing to buy if you're migrating from Linux. Or buy and try - you often have 14 days to return.

 

[jeff_in_MD]

It depends on the size of the containers that you plan on using. I would think, but haven't tried, you can store the files on a external drive. You might have more of an issue with memory then storage.

 

[Starfyre]

So just to clarify, I would not store any music/video collection on this laptop. It would strictly be for coding/development.

 

[dyn]

You need to do some really funky things for 256GB to not be enough diskspace for development and Docker (you'd want to keep containers as small as possible anyway).

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

You need to do some really funky things for 256GB to not be enough diskspace for development and Docker (you'd want to keep containers as small as possible anyway).

I'm really not that familiar with Docker on Mac because I've only used it briefly there but I believe the problem would be this.
If macOS requires Docker to be run inside a VM, VM will have a storage for docker images.
You will have to create a virtual disk for this VM. And here is the question.
If you create e. g. 32GB - you might require more thereafter - this will be relatively hard to resize.
If you create e. g. 192GB dynamical allocation disk - when one day you'll have a lot of dockers you will get rid of next day the disk will grow to 192GB and there will be no possibility to shrink it hence macOS will not be able to reclaim this space for things other than Docker.
I might be wrong.

 

[dyn]

@tryrtryrtryrt: Stop launching personal attacks and I might help you.

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

Storage of the containers, images, etc. will be on the local disk, not in the vm. The vm is only used to run Docker. You can actually change the disk image location from the Docker menu bar item (by default it is in ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker....).

Amazing. Thank you @dyn. I'm happily proven wrong.

 

[BorderingOn]

I use Docker on my 2012 MBP with 8 GB RAM. RAM will be the limiting factor for most development use cases. I have not run more than 5 containers but no issues doing so.

As far as storage, only you know what you'll be working on. Giant databases? You can always carry those volumes on an external drive if the need arises later.

 

[dyn]

@tryrtryrtryrt: Stop launching personal attacks and I might help you.