Containers have a lot of value. My rule of thumb is basically use containers (docker) and as little as possible of anything else in the container ecosystem. So basically put your app in a container try to not change too much from however you currently do things. There is no shame in running --net=host or just doing "-v /mnt/someebsvolume:/data." I personally like Hashicorp because their tools are simple and grow with you. Besides Hashicorp, I don't have great recommendations for tools. In my opinion the current container ecosystem is a disaster for users. Big business ideas took over and killed innovation. Simple lightweight modular systems all got annihilated by Kubernetes and now it's pretty much a monoculture.