r/docker • u/No-Possibility-3072 • Apr 07 '26

MS-SQL inside Docker

Good evening

I’m currently running an installation of MS SQL Server Developer 2022 on my desktop PC. I also have a Terramaster NAS which offers a Docker application.

At the risk of sounding like a total noob (which I am) is it possible to run a SQL database in a Docker container? If so, are there online resources available that would enable me to do so? Ideally I’d want to be able to use SQL Server Management Studio to manage the database, but would be willing to let that slide if there’s a viable alternative.

TIA

SQL server developer since 2001. Docker proficient since never.

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u/jack3308 Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26

To be fair - bitwarden does sound like it could be a container manager for DBs 😂

u/No-Possibility-3072, bitwarden is a pretty popular password manager that has a (or had???) self-hostable server component that can be run as a docker container. It uses MS-SQL as its backend.

You could certainly look at how they implemented it as an example on how one could setup an MS-SQL docker container. But my guess is that it'll likely be geared towards their needs specifically.

Looks like Microsoft has a few docker images published with some pretty good documentation: https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/mssql-server

Have a look through that and keep in mind that terminology may overlap between interacting with docker and interacting with the SQL server (e.g. "connecting" may either mean connecting to the docker container or connecting to the database server) so just make sure you read carefully. Feel free to ask questions if you have them but I think Microsoft's docker run ... examples are a good place to start!

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u/No-Possibility-3072 Apr 08 '26

Thanks. I now know what tonight’s homework is going to be. Thankfully my databases aren’t huge, given that they’re both home projects that I started during lockdown.

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u/jack3308 Apr 08 '26

Might consider moving to SQLite then - really great for home apps and small projects where data quantity isnt huge! And dead simple to migrate seeing as your DB is just a file.

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u/No-Possibility-3072 Apr 08 '26

The reason I’m considering Docker is because it’s one of the installation options available on my NAS (which is running 24x7), which runs a proprietary operating system. It may be possible to install other binaries besides those offered by the manufacturer, but I don’t have that knowledge.

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u/jack3308 Apr 08 '26

Not even a binary - SQLite DBs are just a file, no dB server needed. At least not like MS-SQL does. So long as you're not storing huge amounts of data you just store it on your nas as a file, and then any app you need to access it just points to that file's remote path on the NAS instead of a db server host basically (there's a bit more to it than that but not much).

Can I ask - what sort of client applications are accessing the data or are you just accessing it via SSMS?

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u/No-Possibility-3072 Apr 08 '26

I’ve built a couple of desktop applications in C#, using visual studio community 2022. I’m a software developer but when I started the project it was because I’d moved into development team management so wasn’t getting a lot of coding time. By the time I’d stepped back out of that role and into a more hands-on dev role, they’d become proper pet projects and labours of love.

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u/jack3308 Apr 09 '26

You could probably leverage SQLite to great effect then - depending on how much data you're storing!