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Category: Containers

Using containerd as a Kubernetes Container Runtime

Published 2021-12-28 by Kevin Feasel

Anthony Nocentino has a guide for us:

In this post, I’m going to show you how to install containerd as the container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster. I will also cover setting the cgroup driver for containerd to systemd which is the preferred cgroup driver for Kubernetes. In Kubernetes version 1.20 Docker was deprecated and will be removed after 1.22. containerd is a CRI compatible container runtime and is one of the supported options you have as a container runtime in Kubernetes in this post Docker Kubernetes world. I do want to call out that you can use containers created with Docker in containerd. This post was previously published in February of 2021, this is an updated version with the latest installation and configuration steps.

Click through for instructions on installation and configuration.

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Deploying SQL Server to Azure Container Instance via ARM

Published 2021-12-22 by Kevin Feasel

Rajendra Gupta builds an ARM template:

The Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file for deploying Azure resources automatically. You can use a declarative syntax to specify the resources, their configurations. Usually, if you need to deploy Azure resources, it might be a tiring experience of navigating through different services, their configurations. With the ARM templates, you no longer need to click and navigate around the portal. For example, you can use configure the template for Azure VM or Azure SQL Database deployment.

Click through for a step-by-step walkthrough. I will say, though, that I tend heavily to revise ARM templates the Azure Portal creates. They tend to make everything parameters, to the point where you get inundated with context-free decisions.

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Clear out Those Old Container Images

Published 2021-11-24 by Kevin Feasel

Joy George Kunjikkur has a public service announcement for us:

When we use self-hosted Azure pipeline agents, we may encounter the below issue during the build process. This is not a hard issue to troubleshoot. The reason is there in the error message.

Error processing tar file(exit status 1): open /root/.local/share/NuGet/v3-cache/670c1461c29885f9aa22c281d8b7da90845b38e4$ps:_api.nuget.org_v3_index.json/nupkg_system.reflection.metadata.1.4.2.dat: no space left on device

This is known in the industry as a whoopsie-doops. Click through to see what you can do to resolve the problem.

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Reducing Image Sizes with Docker-Slim

Published 2021-11-08 by Kevin Feasel

Evan Seabrook puts Docker images on a diet:

If you’ve ever worked with Docker, there’s likely been at least one time when it started taking up significant storage space on your computer. For example, some of your images took a long time to download in a CI/CD pipeline. Some common approaches to this problem are to:

– Swap out the base image for something lighter

– Reduce the number of RUN statements in your Dockerfile

– Remove cached package manager artifacts as part of your Dockerfile

These steps, while helpful, can take up a significant amount of time and effort. Thankfully, there are open source tools that can automatically minify an existing Docker image. Enter docker-slim.

Looks like it can slim things down considerably. I haven’t tried this, but might give it a go and see how it works.

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Restoring a Database from Backup in Docker

Published 2021-11-05 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Baldwin has a container in search of a database:

Yesterday, I was watching a Pluralsight course which provided a database .bak file to follow along with the examples. I generally like to use Docker when working with SQL Server locally…but as a somewhat novice user, I have found it to be a bit of a pain if you need to deal with restoring or attaching a database.

When I run into these scenarios, I usually spin up an AWS EC2 instance, install SQL server, and work with it that way. There’s probably a simpler way to do it using RDS or Azure, but I’m not familiar with those just yet. The other option is if I have a Linux machine at hand, I will use that with Docker and mapped volumes work great.

I do happen to have a Linux machine ready to use…but I was determined to figure out how to get this working on Windows.

Bonus points for using RESTORE DATABASE syntax. Every SQL Server user should know how to back up and restore a database using only T-SQL. That’s a skill which will definitely pay dividends.

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SQL Server Environment Variable Files in Containers

Published 2021-09-27 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski shows how you can pre-set environment variables when building a SQL Server on Linux container:

Do we really want to be typing all that out every time we run a container? Ok, we could drop this into a script and execute that but another option is to use environment variable files.

Nice and simple, we take all the environment variables in the statement above and drop them into a file on our Docker host: –

Read on and gauge for yourself how nice and simple it is.

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Setting File Permissions inside a SQL Server Container

Published 2021-09-27 by Kevin Feasel

Anthony Nocentino wants to set some permissions:

This post will walk you through setting file permissions on database files copied into a container. The SQL Server process sqlservr running in containers runs as the non-privileged user mssql. The appropriate permissions on files are needed, so the SQL Server process has the proper access to any database files, log files, and backup files.

Click through for the process.

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An Intro to Dapr

Published 2021-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones tries out Dapr:

I’ve heard about Dapr a few times from developer friends, but hadn’t really understood it that well. I had a webinar coming up, so I decided to spend a bit of time working with it to understand how it might function with an application.

I went to https://dapr.io/, and saw the basic outline of Dapr is in this video from their site. I also found this getting started video from Donovan Brown.

Note that Dapr is totally different from Dapper.

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Why You Should Learn about Containers

Published 2021-09-21 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey has an editorial:

I find myself doing more and more work with containers. Yet, I also find that a lot of people seem to be resistant to the concept. I’m always surprised when technologists reject technology without fully understanding what it does. Let’s talk about this just a little.

I completely agree with Grant’s assessment and want to pile on a bit about cloud services and containers. If you’re using or thinking of using services like Azure Machine Learning or Azure IoT Hub, that work is all containerized. And there’s a lot which runs in containers that we don’t even think about. You don’t need to live your life in containers or run everything from containers, but they’re useful in several contexts.

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