Is balena suitable for my use case?

Product support
1

I need to run docker in a server without network. So I need to use docker save to save the whole image to a tar file and copy it to the server. That’s fine.

But Every time I add new tools to my image, I have to use docker save the very large tar file and copy it. It’s very time consuming to save and copy.

So some one tell me balena may help. I scanned the help documents and have some questions. Can I use it only for cherry pick docker images?

what I want to do it like this.

  1. Install balena in my local machine.
  2. build version 1 of my image.
  3. save this image and copy to remote server and use “docker load” to restore it.
  4. build version 2 of my image(only small diff)
  5. save the diff and copy to remote server and use something like patch to apply the diff.

I know docker can’t do step 4 and 5. How to I achieve this with balena?

2

Hi, I would suggest you first spend some time getting used to the Balena development flow, and then you try to apply it to your use case.

These are the steps I would take:

  1. Follow the getting started for an x86-64 device type like balenaOS - Docs. You can use something like virtualbox for a virtual device (see No hardware? Use VirtualBox to simulate a device for balenaCloud!)
  2. Once you have developed your first container using balena cloud, learn how to switch to local development mode (Develop locally - Balena Documentation). This makes it possible to iterate your container development building on the virtual device itself.

I think using local mode on a virtual device will provide a much quicker iteration on your development, but you will need to spend some time getting use to the methodology.