Mounting a local container host directory using bind mounts

Bind mounts are the simplest form of persistent storage that is shared between the container and the host machine. In this way, you can mount any existing directory from the host filesystem in the container. It is also possible to "overwrite" an existing directory in the container with host directory contents, which may be useful in some scenarios. In general, volumes are the recommended storage solution, but there are a few cases where bind mounts can be useful:

• Sharing configuration between the host and the container. A common use case may be DNS configuration or the hosts file.
• In development scenarios, sharing build artifacts that were created on the host so that they can be consumed inside the container.
• On Windows, mounting SMB file shares as directories in the container.

Creating a bind mount for a container requires the docker run command to be specified with an additional parameter, type=bind, for the --mount flag. In this example, we will mount the host's C:\Users directory as C:\HostUsers in the container:

docker run -it --rm `
           --isolation=process `
           --mount type=bind,source=C:\Users,target=C:\HostUsers `
           mcr.microsoft.com/powershell:windowsservercore-1903

You can verify that any changes performed to C:\HostUsers will also be visible on the host machine in C:\Users.

In the next section, we are going to learn how to leverage bind mounts in order to use remote or cloud storage in Windows containers.