Towards the end of 2016, Microsoft released the first public preview of SQL Server on Linux after having attracted interest from over 8,000 companies who had signed up to try out the new offering. Now, the Redmond giant is celebrating a new milestone in the product's development after "steadily growing customer use".
Since launching in the Docker Hub six month ago, SQL Server on Linux last week exceeded a total of one million pulls of its container image. In fact, some customers, including dv01, a financial tech company, have already opted to deploy such containers for production use under Microsoft's Early Adoption Program. Furthermore, by leveraging containers in combination with SQL Server, dv01 has achieved a 90% reduction in the time spent by development resources in terms of database management.
The news coincides with the release of SQL Server 2017 Community Technology Preview 2.1 which now includes "the ability to configure SQL Server configuration settings through environment variables passed in as parameters to docker run." Plus, in addition to the latest version of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) finally made its debut on Linux, with installation instructions having been provided for Ubuntu.
In terms of timeframes, Microsoft advised that SQL Server 2017 will reach General Availability "later this year." However, in the interim, the company has made available its SQL Server in Docker resources over on GitHub with both Linux and Windows-based containers on offer.
Source: Microsoft
