6. SQL Server 2019 in Containers and Kubernetes
Most SQL Server deployments are achieved via traditional methods: on physical servers or virtual machines (on-premises or in the cloud). Cloud-based offerings such as Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Database Managed Instance are considered Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings and offer the ability to deploy databases and instances respectively without needing to worry about managing the underlying operating system (OS). There is now a newer option to consider for deploying SQL Server: containers.
SQL Server 2017 was the first version of SQL Server to support containers. While containers are part of SQL Server Big Data Clusters (see Chapter 9, SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters), there is more to them than just being a component of that story. This chapter will cover what containers are, why they are important, and how they have been improved in SQL Server 2019.