Which container manager do you guys use?

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Styp

Member
Aug 1, 2018
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Hi guys!

Which container manager do you guys use?
- plain compose?
- portainer?
- Something else?

I need this for my home server, to test some applications and stuff. But wondering what is the 'easiest' solution.

Cheers!
Martin
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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portainer gets my vote. I'm only mildly annoyed since they removed the option to auto-remove unused volumes after container update. I know it's not safe, and but given it's in home environment, I am willing to take a chance to reduce occasional manual cleanup
 

Portainer.io

New Member
Jan 31, 2022
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Auckland, New Zealand
portainer gets my vote. I'm only mildly annoyed since they removed the option to auto-remove unused volumes after container update. I know it's not safe, and but given it's in home environment, I am willing to take a chance to reduce occasional manual cleanup
Not sure what feature you are saying we removed.. if you can drop me an email, neil@portainer.io i can take a look. Im not aware of any changes like the above.. unless thats something we changed years ago.
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Not sure what feature you are saying we removed.. if you can drop me an email, neil@portainer.io i can take a look. Im not aware of any changes like the above.. unless thats something we changed years ago.
Not really worth an email. Just something I very vaguely remember a few years ago setting up portainer for 1st time - I didn't have to manually clean up after the watchtower would auto-update images. There is a -c/ --cleanup flag for watchtower and I'll try it.

To be honest for me Portainer became what vCenter 7 should've become for containers but it didn't.
This is vaguely relevant: Remove unused images · Issue #3490 · portainer/portainer
 

opensourcefan

Member
Aug 24, 2022
65
22
8
I'm currently using Portainer Non Business, but have been experimenting with others. I've tried Rancher, Shipyard and Yacht. Out of those three, yacht was the simplest and close to the same level as Portainer, but the GUI is a little strange.

I'll be trying DockStation here shortly which looks promising.
 

SecCon

Arkham Asylum Server Mgmt
May 26, 2022
275
55
28
Portainer so far. I am open for other, similar, interfaces.
 

tsteine

Active Member
May 15, 2019
167
83
28
Not really worth an email. Just something I very vaguely remember a few years ago setting up portainer for 1st time - I didn't have to manually clean up after the watchtower would auto-update images. There is a -c/ --cleanup flag for watchtower and I'll try it.
Are you referring to this? I had the same annoyance and looked for it, been working great since, for keeping my docker hosts clean from old images
 
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tsteine

Active Member
May 15, 2019
167
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@tsteine and updating them as well?
Yes, all my docker containers are updated without my intervention. Now, granted, this is not an optimal solution for production environments in a business, but for a homelab where you want to avoid manually updating things, it's great. I've not had to handle anything breaking from updates yet (knock on wood).
 
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SecCon

Arkham Asylum Server Mgmt
May 26, 2022
275
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Yes, all my docker containers are updated without my intervention. Now, granted, this is not an optimal solution for production environments in a business, but for a homelab where you want to avoid manually updating things, it's great. I've not had to handle anything breaking from updates yet (knock on wood).
Just to be clear.
You use Watchtower to keep your apps updated, but from what I can read Watchtower is "just" another app so do you use anything like Portainer as well? Or only Docker...
 

tsteine

Active Member
May 15, 2019
167
83
28
Just to be clear.
You use Watchtower to keep your apps updated, but from what I can read Watchtower is "just" another app so do you use anything like Portainer as well? Or only Docker...
I use Portainer for managing my docker hosts, though I also have a k3s cluster which i manage with kubectl and yamls.
 
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