SQLBits 2018

Containers and Clones: giant databases on tiny HDDs

Provision dev databases quickly and easily using containers and clones

Provisioning dev environments is often a slow, complicated and manual process. Often devs simply don’t have the diskspace. And then there is GDPR.

You can solve many of the these problems with virtualisation technologies and source controlled powershell scripts. We’ll show you how by talking you through:

DOCKER CONTAINERS
1. Defining containers
2. Configuring Windows Server 2016 to run containers
3. Running SQL Server containers
4. Creating custom container images
5. Sharing container images

REDGATE CLONES
6. Defining database clones
7. Configuring the SQL Clone server
8. Creating database images from backups or live databases
9. Provisioning clones to a container in one click

The session will explain concepts via slides which will be backed up by demos.

Andrew Pruski's other proposed sessions for 2026

AI-Powered Search in SQL Server 2025 - 2026

New features in SQL Server 2025 - 2026

Andrew Pruski's previous sessions

Disaster Recovery Strategies for SQL Server

"Hope is not a strategy" - Google SRE Team motto Being able to recover our data in the event of an outage is a (if not the most) critical aspect of managing SQL Server. But how do we plan for the worst? What technologies are available to us? And how do we implement a disaster recovery strategy when the worst has just occurred? Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP, Andrew Pruski, in this session to delve into SQL Server disaster recovery strategies.

Chaos Engineering for SQL Server

How can we test potential weaknesses in SQL Server? In this session we will explore the concept of Chaos Engineering, its core concepts, and the methodologies behind it.

Why is understanding Kubernetes important for your career as a Data Professional?

A panel discussion on why both - admins and developers - should understand the impacts and benefits of containerized applications.

Docker Deep Dive

Played around with SQL Server in containers and want to delve further into the platform? This session is for you! In this session we'll dive straight into the Docker platform and investigate its internals.

Container questions that Andrew and Anthony DM each other

A Q&A panel session with Andrew Pruski and Anthony Nocentino talking about all things containers! Hosted by Rob Sewell

Introduction to partitioning

Session will be aimed at Database Administrators\Developers who have not previously implemented partitioning within an OLTP database and is designed to give a overview into the concepts and implementation.

Containers and Clones: giant databases on tiny HDDs

Provision dev databases quickly and easily using containers and clones

An introduction to SQL Server in Containers

Containers are a new and exciting technology but what does it mean for DBAs? This session will give an introduction into SQL Server running in containers and what options are available.

Alex Yates's previous sessions

DevOps 101 for Data Folks

An introduction to the principles that underpin DevOps and the practices that are derived from those principles. This session is mostly theoretical, although it finishes with a brief overview of an Azure DevOps pipeline.

Solving the dev DB problem with Docker and dbaclone

Shared dev databases have a disastrous effect on quality and throughput. However, moving to self-service dev/test databases is hard due to storage and data privacy concerns. The solution? Docker and dbaclone.

Containers and Clones: giant databases on tiny HDDs

Provision dev databases quickly and easily using containers and clones

Getting CI right for SQL server

Write SQL unit tests with tSQLt and automate them with VSTS.