In 2017, Microsoft announced SQL Server in the Windows Containers Beta program, allowing developers to connect to SQL Server instances from within the same container or outside of it. Sta benefits was to ease setup, maximize instance density for development and testing purposes, and isolate and manage applications in a shared environment.
Today, Microsoft announced that it is suspending the program.
In a short suspension on its blog, Microsoft says that the SQL Server in Windows Containers Beta program has been suspended due to ecosystem challenges and "usage patterns." The latter suggests that the program simply did not have enough users to justify continued support. The company carefully worded its statement to indicate that there are no plans to repeat the project in the near future.
The Redmond-based company suggests users migrate to SQL Server on Linux Containers, which is already supported in environments production unlike its Windows counterpart. It is important to note that SQL Server in Windows Containers never managed to "chase" the "beta" tag, so it was not intended for production environments. So this announcement will definitely bother developers who have invested time in developing applications that make use of this feature or those that have used it in production environments.
Microsoft has announced that SQL Server Express and Developer for Windows Containers Docker repositories will be deleted shortly. The tags in these repositories will also be deleted and Docker images will no longer be available for download.
