Andrew Pruski builds up a custom dockerfile with his SQL Server configuration and custom databases:
And there you have it. One newly built SQL container from a custom image running our databases.
Imagine being able to spin up new instances of SQL with a full set of databases ready to go in minutes. This is main advantage that container technology gives you, no more waiting to install SQL and then restore databases. Your dev or QA person can simply run one script and off they go.
I really think this could be of significant benefit to many companies and we’re only just starting to explore what this can offer.
The best part is that it’s quite easy to do, meaning you could set up a guaranteed clean QA image for each continuous integration deployment and know that some process oddity didn’t fail to clean up after itself and thereby wrecked the automated build process.