Dataset with the container image metadata used for our IEEE/ACM CCGRID 2023 paper "An Empirical Study of Container Image Configurations and Their Impact on Start Times". Abstract of the paper: A core selling point of application containers is their fast start times compared to other virtualization approaches like virtual machines. Predictable and fast container start times are crucial for improving and guaranteeing the performance of containerized cloud, serverless, and edge applications. While previous work has investigated container starts, there remains a lack of understanding of how start times may vary across container configurations. We address this shortcoming by presenting and analyzing a dataset of approximately 200,000 open-source Docker Hub images featuring different image configurations (e.g., image size and exposed ports). Leveraging this dataset, we investigate the start times of containers in two environments and identify the most influential features. Our experiments show that container start times can vary between hundreds of milliseconds and tens of seconds in the same environment. Moreover, we conclude that no single dominant configuration feature determines a container's start time and that hardware and software parameters must be considered together for an accurate assessment. Dataset description: Our images dataset contains 200,986 entries with 21 features associated to each container image. In the following, we describe the meaning of each feature. Further information is available in OCI Image Specification and the Docker Run Documentation. Besides the 20 features grouped in the five categories below, each dataset entry has a image_id, which is used to uniquely identify the dataset entry. Features Metadata features (prefix: meta) meta_repo_digest : The repo digest is a SHA-256 hash which is used to uniquely identify and pull the image from Docker Hub meta_architecture : The CPU architecture which the binaries in the image are built to run on meta_os : The name of the operating system which the image is built to run on meta_docker_version : The Docker version used to built this image I/O stream features (prefix: io) io_attach_stdin : boolean setting to determine whether the console should be attached to the process stdin stream io_attach_stdout : boolean setting to determine whether the console should be attached to the process std...