This setup works pretty well most of the time. But there is a major problem. systemd isn't monitoring the container itself, it's really monitoring the client. If the client detaches from the container for whatever reason (e.g. a network problem), systemd will kill the container, even though it may be functioning fine. Conversely, if the container dies but the client remains running, systemd won't do anything. What we really want is for systemd to monitor the container instead of the client1. And there is a solution that does just that, systemd-docker.