Digital transformation has been a driving force for evolving relational databases into the next generation of data management platforms capable of supporting advanced business intelligent applications, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning (AI/ML) applications, and more agile application development platforms. In response, Microsoft has been expanding its software offerings to include support for a broader range of operating systems, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Canonical Ubuntu, and programing languages such as R, and Python. This expansion has paved the way for Microsoft to offer SQL Server on Docker containers.
Microsoft first introduced SQL Server containers on Linux with the release of SQL Server 2017 and is expanding these capabilities with SQL Server 2019. Microsoft has made it easier to adopt SQL Server in containers by enabling new high availability (HA) scenarios with partner clustering solution, for more information, see SQL Server always on availability solutions. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 delivers breakthrough mission critical capabilities with in‑memory performance and operational analytics that are built in while comprehensive security features help protect your data at-rest, data in-motion, and now support for integrated big data.
The following table shows the key features that are new or enhanced in Microsoft SQL Server 2019:
Table 2. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 features
SQL Server Big Data Clusters | SQL Server Big Data Clusters allow you to deploy scalable clusters of SQL Server, Spark, and HDFS containers running on Kubernetes. |
Intelligence over any data | SQL Server is a hub for data integration. Deliver transformational insights over structured and unstructured data with the power of SQL Server and Spark. |
Choice of language and platform | Build modern applications with innovative features using your choice of language and platform on Windows, Linux, and containers. |
Industry-leading performance | Take advantage of breakthrough scalability, performance, and availability for mission-critical, intelligent applications, data warehouses, and data lakes. |
Advanced security features | Protect data at rest and in use. SQL Server has been the least vulnerable database over the last 8 years in the NIST vulnerabilities database. |
Make faster, better decisions | Power BI Report Server gives your users access to rich, interactive Power BI reports, and the enterprise reporting capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services. |
Better high availability | SQL Server 2019 has made significant improvements to availability groups in this version. |
A few use cases for deploying Microsoft SQL server on containers are:
- Using database containers for local dev/test environment in DevOps pipelines.
- Running OLTP workload for a production environment.
- Providing database as a service in a SaaS like environment.
SQL Server in containers offers many advantages for DevOps because of its consistent, isolated, and reliable behavior across environments and ease of use. Application servers can be built distinctly to access the SQL Server containers and run without being affected by the rest of the environment.
