Here is my bare-bones walk-through for setting up SQL Server Developer Edition within Docker for those of us who don’t have time to learn docker right now.
1. I navigated to the Docker website and read about Docker Desktop before installing Docker Desktop for Windows (and creating an account) from my Windows 10 Pro laptop.
During installation I chose to use Windows containers by default, rather than Linux.
2. To find SQL Server Developer Edition, I reached out to the Docker Hub online library from my laptop with this command (typed into a Command-Prompt or Powershell window)
docker search mssql
… which brought back this list …

The second item down on the list is from Microsoft, is in a Windows container, and is the Developer edition.
I copied the name into Notepad and composed this command around it to download, extract, and run SQL Server within a docker container …
docker run -d -p 1433:1433 -e sa_password=Pa55word# -e ACCEPT_EULA=Y --restart always -v C:\temp:c:\temp -v sqldata:c:\var\opt\mssql microsoft/mssql-server-windows-developer
Breaking down that command …
- Docker = invoke Docker
- Run = download, extract, and execute something from Docker Hub.
- -d = detached mode. That is, run independent of the command line.
- -p 1433:1433 = map external port 1433 to internal port 1433.
- -e sa_password=Pa55word# = create an environment variable called sa_password containing the text “Pa55word#” (without the double quotes).
- -e ACCEPT_EULA=Y = create another variable called ACCEPT_EULA containing the value “Y”.
- –restart always = automatically start when Windows starts
- -v c:\temp:c:\temp = map my laptop folder c:\temp to the docker folder c:\temp
- -v sqldata:c:\var\opt\mssql = persist user databases
- microsoft/mssql-server-windows-developer = this is the thing to “Run” (see above).
When complete (after 30 minutes or so) I connected via my regular laptop SSMS (IE: outside of the container) …

… and added it to my registered servers as “Docker SQL Server Developer edition”
(Incidentally, that server name “dot” implies the local default instance on the default port. I could just as correctly have typed “localhost” or “localhost,1433”. Or from another laptop I would have used the IP address of the host laptop.)
Next I changed my Windows setting so the Docker icon would always be visible …

… so that on subsequent boots, I just need to wait for the icon to stop wobbling before connecting to the database via SSMS (and no need for any pesky Docker commands).
To import a backup I moved it to my laptop c:\temp and restored from there using SSMS.
“And finally” (as the late, great, Ronnie Corbett used to say), if after a while it all goes horribly wrong, as software tends to do, you can either uninstall docker and start this article again.
Or venture into the docker command-line to list (docker ps), stop (docker stop ~), then remove the SQL container (docker rm ~). Before using the green command above again.
More on pesky Docker commands soon.