[wfleming]

To add some technical explanation to what larrybud said: Docker containers aren't full VMs. They don't virtualize the computer hardware or the OS kernel. So when you run a bunch of Docker containers on a computer, all of those containers are still using the same underlying OS kernel. Docker really only natively runs on Linux (and BSD), and all Docker containers are running in Linux, so running a Windows VM inside a Docker container would really only be possible if you also ran something like VirtualBox inside the Docker container (and I can't really imagine that working or being a good idea).

In short: VirtualBox is still probably the best option for running those IE VMs, and for cases like this Docker is not really a replacement for or competitor with solutions like VirtualBox.

[gaius]

Yes and no: that isn't how SQL Server on Docker works... Try it for yourself:

    $ docker run -d -p 1433:1433 --env sa_password=abc123 microsoft/mssql-server-2016-express-windows

[mook]

That requires you to be running Windows Server 2016: https://github.com/Microsoft/sql-server-samples/tree/master/...

Essentially, they have a docker-API-compatible HTTP server that runs a different set of container images. Similar to how SmartOS has a docker-API-compatible HTTP server (running on top of, essentially, a Linux emulation layer).

[gaius]

Well yes, that was my point. No sign of VirtualBox running Windows inside Docker there...

[wfleming]

I had completely forgotten they added Windows Container support when running the daemon on a Windows host! Thanks for the correction.