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Category: Containers

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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Patched Security Flaw in Azure Container Instances

Published 2021-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Ionut Ilascu reports on a vulnerability:

Microsoft has fixed a vulnerability in Azure Container Instances called Azurescape that allowed a malicious container to take over containers belonging to other customers on the platform.

An adversary exploiting Azurescape could execute commands in the other users’ containers and gain access to all their data deployed to the platform, the researchers say.

This is fixed now, but it’s a good reminder that platform-as-a-service offerings can still have security problems (as we’ve also seen recently with Power Apps and Cosmos DB).

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Updating SQL Server Container Memory Limits

Published 2021-08-09 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski doesn’t have time to restart containers:

When running multiple SQL Server containers on a Docker host we should always be setting CPU and Memory limits for each container (see the flags for memory and cpus here). This helps prevent the whole noisy neighbour situation, where one container takes all the host’s resources and staves the other containers.

But what if we forget to set those limits? Well, no worries…we can update them on the fly!

Click through to see how you can change the memory limits on a running container.

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Deploying Custom Docker Images in Azure ML

Published 2021-08-05 by Kevin Feasel

Tsuyoshi Matsuzaki shows us how to deploy an Azure ML model via custom Docker image:

In my early post, I have showed you how to bring your own custom docker image in training with Azure Machine Learning.
On the contrary, here I’ll show you how to bring custom docker image in model deployment.

In Azure Machine Learning, the base docker image in deployment includes the inferencing assets, such as, Flask server, etc. So you should use AML compliant image for base image, even when you use your own custom docker image.
The list of these maintained AML images is available in https://github.com/Azure/AzureML-Containers .

Read on for an example.

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Installing Kubernetes on Docker Desktop

Published 2021-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Joy George Kunjikkur takes another stab at Kubernetes:

This is 3rd or 4th time, I am learning Kubernetes (hereafter mostly refer as K8s short form) hands-on sessions. Every time I learn the kubectl command and its options, I forget as there were no chances to apply in the day job. Another mistake I did all those times was missing to post learning to this blog.

Hope this time I will get a chance to use it in the day job and not miss posting the Kubernetes learning on to this blog.

This post is very basic. The aim is to get started with the Kubernetes development environment using Docker Desktop. Below are the steps at a high level to get started. Detailed steps with videos are available on the internet.

Read on for some installation tips, including how to install the Kubernetes dashboard for a UI experience.

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