There’s a one-click setup for it in Lunni, a Docker dashboard I’ve been working on (shameless plug): https://lunni.dev/
If you are somewhat nomadic and always moving systems, having a "home" you can dial back to and pick up where you left off from is a massive boon (with a remote system like this, my phone is now powerful enough to do pretty much any development task as now it's just rendering the front end and not doing real heavy lifting)
If you're an enterprise programmer working on locked down networks and devices with more end point protection tools than endpoints, an unencumbered authorized system with access to the right network assets, as well as standardized and project specific tooling is the difference between coding and coding with one arm tied behind your back and a blindfold on. (actually the benefits for enterprise are many and not just DevEx -- think security, network admin, vendor access, governance, AI rollout, reduction in project specific on-boarding documentation....)
I'm sure there are many other use cases, though these are just the immediate ones that spring to mind.
We use the standard Docker volumes [1] for persisting data. It’s pretty straightforward – you just define a volume and specify where to mount it:
volumes:
app-data: {}
services:
app:
image: example.com/app/backend:latest
volumes:
- app-data:/data
Personally, Docker Swarm works great for me. I was worried about it for a while, too, but Mirantis seems to maintain it pretty well. There are even new features being shipped, like CSI support back in 2023! I’m thinking about adding a Kubernetes backend though, just in case things get worse for Swarm.