OS X does weird stuff with the .local tld, making usage of it for local hosts non-trivial. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201275

Not, that weird:

    > Host names that contain only one label in
    > addition to local, for example
    > "My-Computer.local", are resolved using
    > Multicast DNS (Bonjour) by default. Host names
    > that contain two or more labels in addition to
    > local, for example "server.domain.local", are
    > resolved using a DNS server by default.

Apparently there's nothing wrong with adapting, say, .dev.local (or .ifft.local) with a coresponding hack, ahem, file, under /etc/resolver/dev.local:

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2006/01/04/mac-os-x-and-local-doma...

That looks like a great way to handle it!

It seems to me that .local is reserved for purposes within a local network, not necessarily local to an individual computer itself. You could, for example, set up an internal server on your network and have it resolve with storage.local. You could argue that a collection of containers is basically the same thing, though.

If a container has its own IP address, I think it can be considered its own device on the network, regardless of the details.