Huge files in Docker containers

Question

I need to create a Docker image (and consequently containers from that image) that use large files (containing genomic data, thus reaching ~10GB in size).

How am I suppo

Answer 1

Am I supposed to include them in the container (such as COPY large_folder large_folder_in_container)?

If you do so, that would include them in the image, not the container: you could launch 20 containers from that image, the actual disk space used would still be 10 GB.

If you were to make another image from your first image, the layered filesystem will reuse the layers from the parent image, and the new image would still be "only" 10GB.