Deploying Microsoft SQL Server onto Minishift

Microsoft has recently published SQL Server into the Red Hat Container Catalog as a certified container image. This is a great achievement for us as the Red Hat Ecosystem team has been working with Microsoft for over a year to make this happen. In light of this occasion, I’d like to cover deploying Microsoft SQL Server on Minishift for testing and evaluation. You’ll need Minishift, the included oc utility, and the SQL Server command line tools setup on your local machine. If you don’t already have Minishift, the Red Hat Ecosystem team has assembled a quick start guide at which will help you get it setup. The command line tools for SQL Server can be installed using the documentation provided at

Begin by launching the Minishift cluster, where you should then be automtically authenticated as developer.

minishift start

Ideally, you’ll need a new namespace for deploying SQL Server into (or project as it is called in OpenShift nomenclature):

oc new-project my-mssql

Next, create the imagestream in the new project/namespace using the specific version tag for the remote registry (the latest tag won’t work in this case):

oc import-image mssql-rhel-server --confirm

For additional clarity, the above command uses the following format:

oc import-image <namespace>/<arbitrary-image-stream-name> --from=<registry>/<repository>/<image>:<tag> --confirm

You’ll also need the anyuid security context constraint assigned to the default service account in the project you’ve created:


To be able to deploy the image, you’ll need to create a DeploymentConfig object in a text editor, referencing the created ImageStream named mssql-rhel-server, eg:

kind: "DeploymentConfig"
apiVersion: "v1"
name: "mssql-server-test" (1)
name: "mssql-server-test" (1)
- name: "mssql-rhel-server" (2)
image: "mssql-rhel-server:latest" (3)
- name: ACCEPT_EULA (4)
value: "Y"
- name: SA_PASSWORD (5)
value: "s3curePasswordStr!ng"
- name: MSSQL_PID (6)
value: "Developer"
- containerPort: 1433 (7)
protocol: "TCP"
replicas: 1
- type: "ConfigChange"
- type: "ImageChange"
automatic: true
- "mssql-rhel-server" (2)
kind: "ImageStreamTag"
name: "mssql-rhel-server:latest" (8)
type: "Rolling"
paused: false
revisionHistoryLimit: 2
minReadySeconds: 0

  1. Arbitrary name of the deployment being created
  2. Name to be assigned to the container(s) being deployed
  3. Image name and tag of the backing container image (ignored when using ImageStream)
  4. Setting the ACCEPT_EULA environment variable to Y means that you’re accepting the following EULA:
  5. The SA_PASSWORD environment variable contains the password to the sa admin account, of at least 8 characters and contains three of these four groups: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and non-alphanumeric symbols
  6. The MSSQL_PID environment variable is the Product ID or Edition that the container will run with. Acceptable values are Developer (default), ExpressStandardEnterpriseEnterpriseCore or <valid product id>
  7. TCP port being exposed, where we set the SQL Server default of 1433
  8. ImageStream name and associated tag

Save the file as mssql-dc.yaml or something similar.

In the above DeploymentConfig, the image stream name of mssql-rhel-server must match the image stream name that was created. The latest tag will still work with the image stream, despite the upstream image not supporting this. This is due to the latest tag of the image stream getting set to the sha256 hash of the vNext-CTP2.0 tagged image. The contiainer name under the triggers section must also match the container name being deployed. The rest is arbitrary, including the image: defined under the containers: section as this is essentially ignored in favor of the referenced ImageStream.

You can kick off the deployment by issuing the following command:

oc create -f mssql-dc.yaml

You should then see the pod (we declared only 1 pod replica in the DeploymentConfig) being deployed into the my-mssqlnamespace:

oc get pods

Expose the SQL Server instance using a NodePort service (required when using Minishift), which is declared like so:

oc expose dc mssql-server-test --type=LoadBalancer --name=mssql-server-ingress

To obtain the dynamically-allocated NodePort of SQL server instance, run the following command which should give you the value of the NodePort (it is a high-range port over 30000):

oc export svc mssql-server-ingress

You can now connect to the SQL Server instance using the IP of your Minishift instance and the discovered NodePort(shown as 32316 below). In order to connect, you’ll need the SQL Server command-line tools, and your password for the sa account that was defined in mssql-dc.yaml earlier:

/opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S $(minishift ip),32316 -U sa -P 's3curePasswordStr!ng'

You should now be at a 1> prompt, where you can enter T-SQL statements as you otherwise would. You can test using the following example:

2> GO

Stay tuned for more content from the Red Hat Ecosystem team. In the next installment, we’ll cover setting up a container instance of SQL Server in Azure.


October 1, 2018



November 30, 2018

This yaml is not indented. Why not add a download or use json instead?
