Embodiments disclosed herein provide systems, methods, and computer readable media for container based application reification. In a particular embodiment, an application reification system is provided including one or more computer readable storage media and a processing system operatively coupled with the one or more computer readable storage media. The application reification system further includes program instructions stored on the one or more computer readable storage media that, when read and executed by the processing system, direct the processing system to preserve a version of application data at a first time and a configuration of an application at the first time. At a second time subsequent to the first time, the program instructions direct the processing system to create a template for a container containing the application in the configuration and a pointer to the version of the application data in a secondary storage repository.