Category: Containers

Chris Taylor walks us through updating Docker Desktop for Windows to support Windows Subsystem for Linux 2:

I won’t go too much into what this is as you can read the article in the links above but to summarise, this will improve the experience of docker on windows:

– Improvements in resource consumption
– Starting up docker daemon is significantly quicker (Docker says 10s as opposed to ~1min previously)
– Avoid having to maintain both Linux and Windows build scripts
– Improvements to file system sharing and boot time
– Allows access to some cool new features for Docker Desktop users.

Some of these are improvements we’ve been crying out for over the last couple of years so in my opinion, they’re a very welcome addition.

In order to get started using WSL2, there’s a couple of steps you need to run through which I’ll try and show below with a few screen shots.

Read on for the process.

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Andrew Pruski makes it easy to launch a fully-featured Docker container running SQL Server:

The solution here is to create a custom image with the volume created and permissions set.

But wouldn’t it be easier to just have to run one command to spin up a custom 2019 image, with volumes created and permissions set?

Enter Docker Compose.

Andrew has a GitHub repo with everything set up and includes plenty of screenshots to demonstrate.

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John Morehouse shows how to use volumes to expose data—such as SQL Server data and log files—to a Docker container:

Over the past couple of blog posts, I have been talking about the versatility of deploying SQL Server with Docker.  This combination is a great way to quickly and easily spin up local SQL Server instances.  In the most recent post, I talked about a method to copy and restore a sample database into a Docker container that is running SQL Server.   In this post, I am going to talk about an easier way to accomplish this by attaching a persistent volume to the container.   With this method you don’t have to copy any files into the container, and it makes the overall process easier and repeatable.

First, before we get into the code, let’s talk about what a volume is.  Essentially, a volume is a location on the host machine that can be referenced by the container.  I think of this as a shared folder that the container can see.  Once attached to the container, it can then read or write to the volume.   You can easily declare the volume when you create the container with a simple switch in the command.

John’s examples are on a Mac, but the concepts are essentially the same for Windows or Linux.

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Jamie Wick continues a series on SQL Server and Windows containers:

The docker build command sends the contents of the working directory, along with a dockerfile, to the Docker daemon, as a build context, to create the new image. A dockerfile is a plain text file that contains the name of a (base) image, along with a set of instructions for modifying the image. By default, the dockerfile is assumed to be in the root of the working directory, but a separate location can be specified using the -f parameter in the build command. Additionally, the -t parameter can be used to specify a repository and tag for the new image. Finally, the working directory can be specified using a Path or URL. In the example below, the current directory (.) is being used as the working directory (the docker build command is being run at the root level of the working directory).

Read on for examples.

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