I have many services running on my server and about half of them use postgres. As long as I installed them manually I would always create a new database and reuse the same postgres instance for each service, which seems to me quite logical. The least amount of overhead, fast boot, etc.
But since I started to use docker, most of the docker-compose files come with their own instance of postgres. Until now I just let them do it and were running a couple of instances of postgres. But it’s kind of getting rediciolous how many postgres instances I run on one server.
Do you guys run several dockerized instances of postgres or do you rewrite the docker compose files to give access to your one central postgres instance? And are there usually any problems with that like version incompatibilities, etc.?
It’s kinda weird to see the Docker scepticism around here. I run 40ish services on my server, all with a single docker-compose YAML file. It just works.
Comparing it to manually tweaking every project I run seems impossibly time-draining in comparison. I don’t care about the underlying mechanics, just want shit to work.
I care about the underlying tech in the things I deploy, but the reality is that I lack the time to actively do this in practice.
Ideally I would set everything up manually, but it’s just too hard to keep up with 30+ projects and remembering how/why I set everything up, even with documentation. Docker Compose makes my homelab hobby more manageable.
I think that my skepticism and desire to have docker get out of my way, has more to do with already knowing the underlying mechanics, being used to managing services before docker was a thing, and then docker coming along and saying “just learn docker instead.” Which is fine, if it didn’t mean not only an entire shift from what I already know, but a separation from it, with extra networking and docker configuration to fuss with. If I wasn’t already used to managing servers pre-docker, then yeah, I totally get it.
I used to be a sysadmin in 2002/3 and let me tell you - Docker makes all that menial, boring work go away and services just work. Which is want I want, instead of messing with php.ini extensions or iptables custom rules.
Maybe I’ll try and give it another go soon to see if things have improved for what I need since I last tried. I do have a couple aging servers that will probably need upgraded soon anyway, and I’m sure my python scripts that I’ve used in the past to help automate server migration will need updated anyway since I last used them.