Oracle MySQL - test MySQL with Docker

First things first, I am totally against running any type of Docker container that will hold persistent data in any way or form. Even to the point that I like to make the statement that mounting external storage to a container which will hold the persistent data is a bad thing. Some people will disagree with me, however, in the current state of Docker I am against it. Docker should run stateless services and should in no way be depending on persistent data which is directly available (in any form) in the container itself. Having stated this, this post is about running databases in a container, while databases are one of the best examples of persistent storage.

The only exception I make on the statement of not having persistent storage in a container is volatile testing environments. If you have a testing environment you intend to only use for a couple of hours, using a container to serve a database is not a bad thing at all. What you need to remember, if your container stops, all your data is gone.

Getting started with MySQL in Docker
To get started with MySQL in a Docker container you first have to pull it from the Docker registry. You can pull the official container image from Docker as shown in the example below which is done on Oracle Linux:

[root@docker ~]# docker pull mysql
Using default tag: latest
latest: Pulling from library/mysql
2a72cbf407d6: Pull complete 
38680a9b47a8: Pull complete 
4c732aa0eb1b: Pull complete 
c5317a34eddd: Pull complete 
f92be680366c: Pull complete 
e8ecd8bec5ab: Pull complete 
2a650284a6a8: Pull complete 
5b5108d08c6d: Pull complete 
beaff1261757: Pull complete 
c1a55c6375b5: Pull complete 
8181cde51c65: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:691c55aabb3c4e3b89b953dd2f022f7ea845e5443954767d321d5f5fa394e28c
Status: Downloaded newer image for mysql:latest
[root@docker ~]# 

Now, this should give you the latest evrsion of the MySQL container image. You can check this witht  the docker images command as shown below:

[root@docker ~]# docker images | grep mysql
mysql        latest       5195076672a7        4 days ago          371MB
[root@docker ~]#

Start MySQL in Docker
To start MySQL you can use the below command as an example. As you can see this is a somewhat more extended command than you might see on the Docker page for MySQL.

docker run --name testmysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=verysecret -p 3306:3306 --rm -d mysql

What I have added in the above example is that I map the internal port 3306 to an external port 3306. If you run multiple instances of MySQL you will need to change the external port numbers. I also added --rm to ensure the docker image is not persisted in any way or form as soon as you stop it.

After starting the container you should be able to find it with a docker ps command:

[root@docker ~]# docker ps |grep mysql
5d8f8bac45a1        mysql        "docker-entrypoint..."   8 minutes ago     Up 8 minutes        0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp  testmysql
[root@docker ~]# 

Use databases in Docker?
As already stated, and actually the reason I wrote this post, you should not run anything in a container where you will need to have persistent storage available within the container itself. Databases are a good example of this. Based upon that statement you should not run a database in a container. Having stated that, if you can live with the fact you might lose all your data (for example in a quick test setup) there is nothing against running a database in a container.

Just make sure you don't do it with your production data (please....).