Docker Rancher persistent storage not working

Question

I am new to Rancher and Docker and I am having trouble getting my data to persist.

What I have done so far is using Rancher/Cattle I have created an EC2 server via the UI and have ran the below docker-compose.yml file and it successfully activates the mysql service.

What I am expecting is that, once the stack/service is running, any file written to dir /var/lib/mysql inside the container will be persisted even if the stack/service has been removed. I expect that I should be able to find the file on the EC2 server. Is this a correct assumption?

I can confirm that when I stop the service via the Rancher UI, any files that I added are persisted once I restart the service and log into the container. However when I remove the stack and rebuild it on the same host using the same docker-compose.yml file, those files have been removed.

version: '2'
services:
   mysql:
     container_name: flask_mysql
     restart: always
     image: mysql:latest
     environment:
       MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'test_pass' # TODO: Change this
       MYSQL_USER: 'test'
       MYSQL_PASS: 'pass'
     volumes:
      - my-datavolume:/var/lib/mysql
volumes:
  my-datavolume:
   driver: local

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You've defined a stack-scoped volume, which is tied to that particular stack and removed when you delete the stack. If you want it to live outside of the stack you need an environment-scoped volume: http://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v1.6/en/cattle/volumes/#environment-scoped-volumes