Aspects of the invention include creating and starting fast-start container images. A preview image of a container is received at a host computer. The preview image includes a subset of an original image of the container. The preview image of the container is executed, at the host computer, for a workload. Based at least in part on detecting a fault during the executing of the preview image of the container, one of the original image of the container and a portion of the original image not included in the preview image of the container is accessed for continuing execution of the workload.