4 ms·

Running container outside a VM is my use case too. Would love to see some performance numbers.

by ianpurton 5y ago

sp332 5y ago
What is the advantage?
- saxonww 5y ago
  Docker Desktop for Mac runs Docker in a VM. It has poor disk I/O compared to native, and IIRC it is not as capable as native from a networking perspective (perhaps not a big issue). Also, as of recently it costs money to use Docker Desktop for Mac for work purposes. So the advantage is you get better container performance, all the capability you would normally get with container workloads on their native platform (Linux), and you wouldn't have to use the Docker Desktop product anymore.
  - xur17 5y ago
    In addition to performance, I also ran into weird bugs with the Docker Desktop vm. The VM would run out of disk, and other things that would not occur with a native docker.
    - stcredzero 5y ago
      I was constantly seeing a coworker at my last job in that sort of situation. For some reason Docker on MacOS was inflating RAM use, IIRC.
      - saxonww 5y ago
        It also has weird bouts of high CPU usage, even if running containers are not busy. I think it's due to overhead with osxfs handling local disk changes (e.g. you've mounted a volume with a large git repo, and in that repo on the host you switched to a much different revision). It's hard to troubleshoot because it's not obvious how to get into the VM to see what's going on. FWIW, https://stackoverflow.com/a/68561693/3230028 https://stackoverflow.com/a/68561693/3230028 is how you do that. Overall, this is an issue that I think goes beyond Docker on a Mac. We have multiple examples of development targeting one platform, or involving tools native to that platform. But because of preference, or conflict with other tools, or policy, we end up with these emulation or compatibility layers like HyperKit/Docker for Mac, or WSL/WSL2, or WINE, or frankly WebAssembly/Emscripten/whatever. And I think the result is almost always worse than if people just found the most native set of tooling for their primary use case and used that. What is it about macOS that makes Docker Desktop for Mac worth it, if your development workflow is heavily container-based? At my workplace, it's mostly policy and preference issues making Linux unsuitable for the majority of the user base, even though that majority is working with containers constantly and targeting Linux. I guess you can pick at this and point out that we're not writing software in assembly for a reason, but I feel like there's a line where you have too much abstraction, adaptation, or emulation, and for me workflows built around something like Docker Desktop for Mac just so we can use macOS are over that line.
- wiredfool 5y ago
  Docker on the Mac is 10x slower for some of my workloads than Docker on my linux cloud machine. (e.g., npm install is literally a few seconds vs 5 minutes)

Running container outside a VM is my use case too. Would love to see some performance numbers.

sp332 5y ago

What is the advantage?

saxonww 5y ago
Docker Desktop for Mac runs Docker in a VM. It has poor disk I/O compared to native, and IIRC it is not as capable as native from a networking perspective (perhaps not a big issue). Also, as of recently it costs money to use Docker Desktop for Mac for work purposes. So the advantage is you get better container performance, all the capability you would normally get with container workloads on their native platform (Linux), and you wouldn't have to use the Docker Desktop product anymore.
- xur17 5y ago
  In addition to performance, I also ran into weird bugs with the Docker Desktop vm. The VM would run out of disk, and other things that would not occur with a native docker.
  - stcredzero 5y ago
    I was constantly seeing a coworker at my last job in that sort of situation. For some reason Docker on MacOS was inflating RAM use, IIRC.
    - saxonww 5y ago
      It also has weird bouts of high CPU usage, even if running containers are not busy. I think it's due to overhead with osxfs handling local disk changes (e.g. you've mounted a volume with a large git repo, and in that repo on the host you switched to a much different revision). It's hard to troubleshoot because it's not obvious how to get into the VM to see what's going on. FWIW, https://stackoverflow.com/a/68561693/3230028 https://stackoverflow.com/a/68561693/3230028 is how you do that. Overall, this is an issue that I think goes beyond Docker on a Mac. We have multiple examples of development targeting one platform, or involving tools native to that platform. But because of preference, or conflict with other tools, or policy, we end up with these emulation or compatibility layers like HyperKit/Docker for Mac, or WSL/WSL2, or WINE, or frankly WebAssembly/Emscripten/whatever. And I think the result is almost always worse than if people just found the most native set of tooling for their primary use case and used that. What is it about macOS that makes Docker Desktop for Mac worth it, if your development workflow is heavily container-based? At my workplace, it's mostly policy and preference issues making Linux unsuitable for the majority of the user base, even though that majority is working with containers constantly and targeting Linux. I guess you can pick at this and point out that we're not writing software in assembly for a reason, but I feel like there's a line where you have too much abstraction, adaptation, or emulation, and for me workflows built around something like Docker Desktop for Mac just so we can use macOS are over that line.
wiredfool 5y ago
Docker on the Mac is 10x slower for some of my workloads than Docker on my linux cloud machine. (e.g., npm install is literally a few seconds vs 5 minutes)