Technologies are provided for backing virtualization containers with layered storage volumes stored in remote storage devices. A virtualization container can present a virtual storage volume to a process running in the virtualization container and handle data access requests from the process using a layered storage volume based on one or more read-only snapshots stored in one or more remote storage devices. Changes can be recorded in a read-write layer in one or more of the remote storage devices and associated with the layered storage volume. A new read-only snapshot can be created based on the data in the read-write storage layer and associated with the one or more read-only snapshots on which the layered storage volume is based. A virtualization container can be associated with a new layered storage volume based on the created read-only snapshot and the one or more read-only snapshots on which it is based.