Storage region vs Instance region - few choices

I am trying to setup my first instance but…

The only region available for cloud/persistent storage is Texas. Of the only 2 instances currently available neither is available in Texas. We are currently using these GPUs to train our models. Is this what I should expect:

Very few instance types available.

Upgrading to later version of Python

This article should give you everything you need: Installing Multiple Alternative Versions of Python on Ubuntu 20.04

Typically, with python projects, you run your project in a virtual environment in which you can specify which interpreter you will use.

Docker data saved in persistent storage

ML Training I know that we can store our models, training data, etc in persistent storage so that we don’t have to load it every time we spin up a new instance. Can we do the same with Docker data (/var/lib/docker/)? I assume we are getting our own VM but not sure if we’ll have the root privilege…