Best practice for docker webserver, muliple layers or single layer?

Question

I want to build a docker webserver, serving Nginx, PHP and MySQL for multiple websites.

Would it be better to run a single docker container for each component, ie one for MySQL, one for Nginx, One for PHP and another for my site data.

Or Run multipul containers that each include all the services (MySQL, PHP, Nginx and site Data) together, one for each web app?

Or just one with all the services, and another with site data?

My main concerns here are data backup, and using the hardware efficiently.

Answer 1

Normally we think Container as process. One process does one job.

So recommend to simplify the container if you can. Set containers for each service

Answer 2

As BMW mentioned, simplifying containers is what Docker recommends. Containers should be lightweight, micro-services that are portable. It is easy enough to use the Docker cli --link function to connect each service.

Tutum has an example of a separated LAMP stack. The web server is located on the same container as PHP code but that should be sufficient. I don't see why movine Nginx on to a different container is necessary unless you intend on load balancing.

Here is the example from Tutum: https://github.com/tutumcloud/lamp