Ergh, not a fun weekend rugby wise. But anyway…

Last week Microsoft released an image for SQL Server 2016 SP1 Developer Edition in containers. Previously the only edition available was vNext Enterprise Evaluation which was a real problem in making containers a viable option for many businesses.

There’s no point in having a development environment referencing a SQL instance that is not the same version as production. How many people would be running vNext in production? I bet there’s a few (mad) early adopters out there but in the main, I would say most businesses would be running 2016, 2014 or 2012.

Having this image available means that developers/DBAs can now seriously look at containers as an option when building development environments. Need to build an environment quickly? That’s what containers give you. I’d love to see this technology become widely used in the SQL Server world. I’ve been working with them for over a year now and being able to spin up a new instance of SQL Server in seconds is really cool.

It does beg the question are Microsoft going to release images for other, earlier versions of SQL Server? I’m honestly not sure that they will but if they want containers to become more widespread that would be the way to do it. We’ll see what happens but even if they don’t there are other options out there.

Have a good week!