When docker was added, there was a lot of hype about docker using AUFS, which allowed two different docker containers to use the same base layers and thus reduce some of the overhead. Now Docker prefers devicemapper (for example, by default in Ubuntu 14.04). Does devicemapper have the same functionality, or have people found out that the benefits are not too great when using AUFS?
This article details the differences between storage backends available for dockers. Devicemapper support was implemented because AUFS is not part of the kernel and therefore is only available on the systems (such as Ubuntu) that provided it. Because of this, it is usually not recommended in a production environment.
No, devicemapper does not provide the same functionality - it is much, much slower; since it works at the block device level, it needs to deal with installation, unmounting, fsck'ing, etc.
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