Choosing the right Docker storage driver is critical for container performance and reliability. This analysis benchmarks overlay2, devicemapper, and btrfs across multiple workloads, revealing significant differences in I/O throughput, metadata operations, and stability. Overlay2 emerges as the recommended default for most modern Linux distributions due to its simplicity and performance. Devicemapper, while historically common, shows higher overhead and complexity. Btrfs offers advanced features like snapshots but with trade-offs in performance consistency. The article provides concrete data points and recommendations for DevOps teams evaluating their storage stack. For production environments, overlay2 is generally the safest choice, but specialized use cases may benefit from btrfs's snapshot capabilities. Understanding these trade-offs helps avoid common pitfalls in container storage management.
A performance comparison of Docker storage drivers with practical benchmarks for production deployment.