dockerzfs

Access hosts zfs from docker container


Is there a way to access the hosts zfs snapshots from within the docker?

I'm trying to get some custom backup, using zfs snapshots with send/receive, running on a cluster of docker based servers. To stick to the current setup, I'd like the backup service to run in a docker container as well. I'm having a hard time figuring out if there's any way to access the hosts file system, on an administrative level, from within a docker container.

I basically need a way to run zfs list, zfs snap and zfs send from within the container. My gut tells me "no", but maybe there's a clever way by some mount options and privilege wizardry


Solution

  • Unfortunately, there is no way to do that. We've had the same problem ourselves, and the way we worked around it was by creating a container-less service which the containers can issue commands to, and the container-less service could then issue ZFS commands on their behalf and return the results. It's not a perfect solution, but (at least for us) it was better than nothing.