Evaluating software infrastructure is important, but it should not be difficult. You should be able to try and see quickly whether a piece of core software suits your needs. This is one of the many helpful use cases for Docker. Of course Docker has many more uses, including helping run a 107 node cluster with CoreOS, but this post focuses on the quick start scenario.
With an install of boot2docker.io for Mac or Windows, and a pre-configured ‘cluster-in-a-box’ Docker container, you can be on your way to interacting with a distributed system like SingleStore in a few minutes.
If you are ready to jump in, head to our Quick Start with Docker documentation.
In a nutshell, we have built a ‘quickstart’ container that comes installed with SingleStore Ops for management, a single-node SingleStore cluster, and some sample programs referenced in tutorials.
Obviously, this is not the configuration to test drive maximum performance. If that were the case, you would want to take advantage of the distributed architecture of SingleStore across several nodes. But it is a great way to get a sense of working with SingleStore, connecting with a MySQL client, and experiencing the database first hand.
If you already have Docker installed, you can jump right in with a few simple commands.
Spin up a cluster
$ docker pull memsql/quickstart
$ docker run --rm --net=host memsql/quickstart check-system
$ docker -d -p 3306:3306 -p 9000:9000 --name=memsql memsql/quickstart
At this point you can create a database, and interact with the ‘cluster-in-a-box’ install of SingleStore.
For example you can run a quick benchmark against SingleStore with the following Docker command
$ docker run --rm -it --link=memsql:memsql memsql/quickstart simple-benchmark
For more information on working with SingleStore and the ‘cluster-in-a-box’ Docker container, visit our documentation at docs.singlestore.com/latest/setup/docker.
We’ve also made the Dockerfile available on Github at github.com/memsql/memsql-docker-quickstart.
And if you would like to try SingleStore in full, please visit singlestore.com/cloud-trial/. There we have a free unlimited scale and capacity Community Edition and a free 30-day Enterprise Trial.
