MSSQL on a Mac

Older Macs (e.g. MacBook late 2008)

Prerequisite: VirtualBox. Grab your copy here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Official docker app is not running on the older Macs but we still can make MSSQL run on those machines and that's fucking awesome. Firs of all we have to install boot2docker

$ brew install boot2docker

After a successful installation you'll see something like this:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Your identification has been saved in /Users/<your account name>/.ssh/id_boot2docker.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/<your account name>/.ssh/id_boot2docker.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:somefingeprint <your account name>@home

To connect the Docker client to the Docker daemon, please set:
    export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://<your-docker-IP>:2376
    export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/Users/<your account name>/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm
    export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1

Or run: `eval "$(boot2docker shellinit)"`

Run eval "$(boot2docker shellinit)" and it will add your docker settings to your ~/.bash_profile

MSSQL needs at least 4 gigs of RAM. You have to configure your docker accroding to it:

$ boot2docker init -m 4096

Ok, you should be ready know to run MSSQL

$ docker run --name mssql -e 'ACCEPT_EULA=Y' -e 'SA_PASSWORD=yourStrong(!)Password' -p 1433:1433 -d microsoft/mssql-server-linux

By providing a --name mssql option, we're giving our container a name and can interact with it later by using this name mssql

If you want to connect to MSSQL from the console, there's an npm package for that:

npm install -g sql-cli

Once installed you can connect to your MSSQL instance by running:

$ mssql -s <your-docker-IP> -u SA -p 'yourStrong(!)Password'

bash to the rescue

If you want to make your life with docker a little bit easier you can put this piece of code into your ~/.bash_profile

Change the IP of your docker accordingly.

# mssql functions
function ms() {
  if [ "$@" = start ]
  then
    echo "don't forget to 'boot2docker start' first"
    msstart
  elif [ "$@" = connect ]
  then
    msconnect
  elif [ "$@" = stop ]
  then
    docker stop mssql && docker rm mssql
  else
    echo "provide an option either 'start', 'connect' or 'stop'"
  fi
}

# start mssql
function msstart() {
  docker run --name mssql -e 'ACCEPT_EULA=Y' -e 'SA_PASSWORD=yourStrong(!)Password' -p 1433:1433 -d microsoft/mssql-server-linux
}
export -f msstart

#connect to mssql
function msconnect() {
  mssql -s <your-docker-IP> -u SA -p 'yourStrong(!)Password'
}
export -f msconnect

You'll be able to start, stop and connect to MSSQL by running

$ ms start
$ ms connect
$ ms stop

Docker goodies

Once you start MSSQL with $ ms start docker will give you an identifier for your container. To see the logs, just run

$ docker logs -f <identifier>

To see what containers are runnig use

$ docker ps

If you cannot remove your container by using the name mssql, try to remove it by using the container identifier

$ docker rm <identifier>

Sample Database

You'll find two sql scripts to create a sample database.

Connect to MSSQL by running ms connect (you have to start MSSQL first if it's not running) and run from the mssql console

> .run path/to/sample-model.sql
> .run path/to/sample-data.sql

Troubleshooting

In case you're experiencing problems with docker looking for certifcates in the wrong place, try to change following line in your ~/.bash_profile from

export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/Users/<your username>/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm

export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/Users/<your username>/.docker/machine/machines/default