Why would you want to mount a directory to your container?

Mounting a directory to your container is primarily beneficial because containers are ephemeral by nature, meaning they do not retain data after being stopped or deleted. When you mount a directory from the host into the container, you establish a persistent storage layer that allows the container to read and write data that will persist beyond the lifecycle of the container itself. This is particularly important for applications that need to maintain state or data across container restarts or recreations, such as databases or certain web applications.

This approach helps manage containerized applications effectively, alleviating the concern of data loss when containers are removed or redeployed. Utilizing mounted volumes ensures that critical data can be kept safe and accessibly stored in a dedicated directory on the host system, making it available to the container even if the container itself is transient.