Docker

Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now runs successfully on Docker Desktop for macOS without needing OrbStack.

Update (February 2, 2026): Microsoft has fixed this issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now runs successfully on Docker Desktop for macOS without needing OrbStack. See my follow-up post for details.

SQL Server 2025 RTM is here, and if you’re running Docker on macOS Tahoe 26, you might have hit a wall trying to get it running. Here’s what happened when I tried spinning up the latest container image and how I worked around it.

Load balancing Ollama instances with Nginx to scale embedding generation for SQL Server 2025 vector search, achieving 6x performance improvement.

I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates HammerDB benchmarking for SQL Server using Docker. If you’ve ever needed to run TPC-C or TPC-H benchmarks multiple times, you know how time-consuming the manual setup can be. This project removes the hassle and gets you up and running a single command: ./loadtest.sh.

Why I Built This

In my work, I frequently benchmark SQL Server configurations, whether I’m comparing versions, testing new hardware, or validating performance tuning changes. Setting up HammerDB manually each time became a significant time bottleneck (see what I did there! ;). I needed an automated solution that would work consistently across different environments and reduce the time required to get test results.

This post shows 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 as a container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster and support was removed in 1.22. Kubernetes 1.26 requires that you use a runtime that conforms with the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). containerd is a CRI-compatible container runtime and is one of the supported options you have as a container runtime in this post-Docker/Kubernetes world. To be clear, you use container images created with Docker in containerd. containerd will start and run the container in your Kubernetes cluster. This post was previously published in February 2021. This is an updated version with the latest installation and configuration steps.

Last week I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with an M2 processor. After I got all the standard stuff up and running, I set out to learn how to run SQL Server containers on this new hardware. This post shows you how to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon using colima.

Colima is a container runtime that runs a Linux VM on your Mac. This Linux VM runs using the Virtualization framework hypervisor native in MacOS. Your containers will run inside this virtual machine.

This post introduces you to the Pure Storage FlashArray OpenMetrics Exporter. It shows you how to get started quickly using Docker Compose so you can monitor your Pure Storage FlashArray environment.

I implemented this in Docker Compose since that handles all the implementation and configuration steps for you. It specifically configures Prometheus’ data source and a Grafana dashboard for monitoring.

Tip: If you’re building a persistent monitoring solution, I suggest using a dedicated Linux server running Docker Engine (Server) for Linux. If you’re testing out this solution check out Docker Desktop on your operating system choice. In my lab, I’m using Docker Engine on Ubuntu.

Yesterday in this post I described a method to correct permissions when upgrading a SQL Server 2017 container using Data Volumes to 2019’s non-root container on implementations that use the Moby or HyperKit VM. My friend Steve Jones’ on Twitter wondered if you could do this in one step by attaching a shell (bash) in the 2017 container prior to shutdown. Absolutely…let’s walk through that here in this post.  I opted to use an intermediate container in the prior post out of an abundance of caution so that I was not changing permissions on the SQL Server instance directory and all of the data files while they were in use. Technically this is a-ok, but again…just being paranoid there.

Recently Microsoft released a Non-Root SQL Server 2019 container and that’s the default if you’re pulling a new container image. But what if you’re using a 2017 container running as root and want to upgrade your system the SQL Server 2019 container…well something’s going to break. As you can see here, my friend Grant Fritchey came across this issue recently and asked for some help on Twitter’s #sqlhelp. This article describe a solution to getting things sorted and running again. The scenario below is if you’re using a Linux based SQL Server container on Windows or Mac host where the container volumes are backed by a Docker Moby or HyperKit virtual machine. If you’re using Linux container on Linux, you’ll adjust the file system permissions directly.

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at PASS Summit 2019!  This is my second time speaking at PASS Summit and I’m very excited to be doing so! What’s more, is I get to help blaze new ground with an emerging technology,** Kubernetes and how to run SQL Server in Kubernetes**!

My session is “Inside Kubernetes – An Architectural Deep Dive” if you’re a just getting started in the container space and want to learn how Kubernetes works and dive into how to deploy SQL Server in Kubernetes this is the session for you. I hope to see you there!