Docker deserves better than shared hosting
"Container as a service" platforms charge per container and per gigabyte: past three or four services, a dedicated VPS costs two to three times less — with the decisive advantage of total control. You choose the daemon version, the storage driver, the network topology. Above all, you're not capped by a platform's arbitrary quotas.
Why NVMe Gen4 transforms builds
Docker is an IOPS consumer: every docker build writes hundreds of layers, every docker-compose up reads dozens of images in parallel. On regular SSD (or worse, shared storage), building a Node.js image takes 4 minutes; on our 1M-IOPS NVMe Gen4, it drops under 90 seconds. Multiplied by dozens of CI builds a day, that's hours of developer time recovered.
Sizing for containers
The rule of thumb: sum your services' memory limits, add 1.5 GB for the OS and daemon, keep 20% headroom. A Quantum (32 GB DDR5) typically hosts 15 to 25 production containers: reverse proxy, applications, databases, workers. Our customers run complete stacks on it — Nextcloud + OnlyOffice, GitLab CE, or a dozen Node.js microservices.
Settings that make the difference
Enable the overlay2 driver (modern default), cap JSON logs (max-size: 10m), and switch the daemon to live-restore so containers survive Docker updates. Our guide "Docker in production on a VPS" details each point with complete configurations.
Snapshots: your safety net
Before every major docker-compose pull, a hypervisor snapshot gives you one-click rollback. It's the difference between a stressful update and a non-event.