overlay2 | overlay2 is the preferred storage driver for all currently supported Linux distributions, and requires no extra configuration. |
fuse-overlayfs | fuse-overlayfsis preferred only for running Rootless Docker on a host that does not provide support for rootless overlay2. On Ubuntu and Debian 10, the fuse-overlayfs driver does not need to be used, and overlay2 works even in rootless mode. Refer to the rootless mode documentation for details. |
btrfs and zfs | The btrfs and zfs storage drivers allow for advanced options, such as creating “snapshots”, but require more maintenance and setup. Each of these relies on the backing filesystem being configured correctly. |
vfs | The vfs storage driver is intended for testing purposes, and for situations where no copy-on-write filesystem can be used. Performance of this storage driver is poor, and is not generally recommended for production use. |
aufs | The aufs storage driver Was the preferred storage driver for Docker 18.06 and older, when running on Ubuntu 14.04 on kernel 3.13 which had no support for overlay2. However, current versions of Ubuntu and Debian now have support for overlay2, which is now the recommended driver. |
devicemapper | The devicemapper storage driver requires direct-lvm for production environments, because loopback-lvm, while zero-configuration, has very poor performance. devicemapper was the recommended storage driver for CentOS and RHEL, as their kernel version did not support overlay2. However, current versions of CentOS and RHEL now have support for overlay2, which is now the recommended driver. |