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Category: Containers

Converting Docker Compose Files with Kompose

Published 2019-07-11 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski shows how you can convert a Docker compose file to something which Kubernetes can read using Kompose:

This will spin up one container running SQL Server 2019 CTP 3.1, accept the EULA, set the SA password, and set the default location for the database data/log/backup files using named volumes created on the fly.

Let’s convert this using Kompose and deploy to a Kubernetes cluster.

To get started with Kompose first install by following the instructions here. I installed on my Windows 10 laptop so I downloaded the binary and added to my PATH environment variable.

It looks pretty straightforward to use; check it out.

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Chaos Engineering and KubeInvaders

Published 2019-07-05 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski wants to play a game:

KubeInvaders allows you to play Space Invaders in order to kill pods in Kubernetes and watch new pods be created (this actually might be my favourite github repo of all time).

I demo SQL Server running in Kubernetes a lot so really wanted to get this working in my Azure Kubernetes Service cluster. Here’s how you get this up and running.

I got to see Andrew show it off at SQL Saturday Cork and it was as fun as you’d expect.

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Installing SQL Server on Windows Containers

Published 2019-07-03 by Kevin Feasel

Mohammad Darab shows how you can install SQL Server on a Windows Container:

Today, Microsoft released Windows Containers, currently in the Early Adoption Program here. You can use the same Docker Desktop for Windows but now you can use Windows Containers to deploy SQL Server (as you will see below).

This is primarily for dev/test environments. This is in no way production ready. Think about a developer asking for a SQL instance so that they can run their code against, etc. You can now easily, and quickly, spin up a container running SQL Server. Once they are done, you can remove it or stop it.

The downside is that your Docker Desktop for Windows is now stuck running Windows containers…

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Building a Big Data Cluster

Published 2019-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Mohammad Darab continues a series on SQL Server Big Data Clusters in Azure Kubernetes Service:

To kick off the Big Data Cluster “Default configuration” creation, we will execute the following Powershell command:

mssqlctl cluster create

That will first prompt us to accept the license terms. Type y and Enter. 

Mohammad takes us through the default installation, which requires only a few parameters before it can go on its merry way.

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Feeding Kubernetes Log Data to Logstash and Kibana

Published 2019-06-24 by Kevin Feasel

Aayushi Johari shows how you can stand up a Kubernetes cluster and review log data using Logstash and Kibana:

In this article, you will learn how to publish Kubernetes cluster events data to Amazon Elastic Search using Fluentd logging agent. The data will then be viewed using Kibana, an open-source visualization tool for Elasticsearch. Amazon ES consists of integrated Kibana integration.

We will walk you through with the following process:
– Creating a Kubernetes Cluster
– Creating an Amazon ES cluster
– Deploy Fluentd logging agent on Kubernetes cluster
– Visualize kubernetes date in Kibana

Click through for the full article.

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Building an AKS Cluster

Published 2019-06-24 by Kevin Feasel

Mohammad Darab continues a series on Big Data Clusters by creating a Kubernetes pod in Azure Kubernetes Service:

Next, we will create a resource group by executing the following command:
az group create –name nameOfMyresourceGroup –location eastus2

Once you execute the above command, you can go into the Azure portal and refresh your resource group pane and see the newly created resource group.

Once that is setup, it’s time to create the actual Kubernetes cluster.

Click through for the full set of instructions.

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Running Confluent Platform with .NET

Published 2019-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Niels Berglund shows how you can install Confluent Platform as a Docker container and use the .NET client against it:

What we see in Figure 16 are the various project related files, including the source file Program.cs. What is missing now is a Kafka client. For .NET there exists a couple of clients, and theoretically, you can use any one of them. However, in practice, there is only one, and that is the Confluent Kafka DotNet client. The reason I say this is because it has the best parity with the original Java client. The client has NuGet packages, and you install it via VS Code’s integrated terminal: dotnet add package Confluent.Kafka --version 1.0.1.1:

Definitely use the Confluent client. The others were from a time when there was no official driver; most aren’t even maintained anymore.

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Docker Desktop Resource Limits

Published 2019-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski lays out the default resource limits for Linux and Windows containers using Docker Desktop on Windows:

Docker Desktop is a great product imho. The ability to run Windows and Linux containers locally is great for development and has allowed me to really dig into SQL Server on Linux. I also love the fact that I no longer need to install SQL 2016/2017, I can run it in Windows containers.

However there are some differences between how Windows and Linux containers run in Docker Desktop. One of those differences being the default resource limits that are set.

Read on to see how they differ and how to deal with Windows container resources.

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The Banality of Containers

Published 2019-06-19 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey points out that containers hosting SQL Server are, in and of themselves, banal:

I’m only half joking when I say containers are boring and dull. They’re not. The technology is amazing. However, that technology doesn’t fundamentally change what you’re dealing with. It’s SQL Server. How do you capture detailed performance metrics in a container? Extended Events. How do you capture aggregated performance metrics and query plans in a container? Query Store. What’s the backup syntax for a database in a container? BACKUP DATABASE. We can keep going on this, but I won’t.

To a great extent, this is the same as SQL Server on Linux: once you have it installed, it works just like the Windows version (well, save for the things which aren’t there yet). All of the magical parts are in getting there.

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Containers and Data

Published 2019-06-13 by Kevin Feasel

Randolph West argues that you should keep data and containers separated:

Where it gets interesting is that the SQL Server container is also where the database files are stored by default. I raised a point (which Grant and others have already noted in the past) that persisted storage volumes allow us to throw away a SQL Server container without throwing away the database files, provided that the container is set up to use that persisted storage.

For example, I can map the SQL Server container to a local directory on my Ubuntu or Windows Server, or — as is the case with Kubernetes — a second container can serve as the storage volume. SQL Server is then just a compute engine, or a “service” as Anthony points out in the Twitter thread.

Because every rule has a counter-example (even this one), there are cases when you do want the data to live with the container. For example, a test database for a unit test runner should probably live inside the container rather than being a persisted volume. The reason is that you can blow away the database after a test run and start over for the next run. Putting together a database for a hackathon or user group can be another exception for the same reason. But for pretty much every other purpose, I’d rather have a persisted volume.

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