Docker, I am excited!, I am not going to describe what docker is, how it to install it etc. See https://www.docker.com/ for details. Docker is mostly used by software developers and system administrators to quickly setup and manage software or environment.

How to use it

With Docker, it is very easy to setup a software in your machine. Wow! thanks to DockerHub, there are a lot of ready-made software containers available. You name it, you will find it there. I can experiment without worrying whether my actions corrupt the software. With few simple commands, I can install or uninstall say a database and run it.

Installing MySQL

To begin with, you have to go to https://hub.docker.com/ and search for MySQL. The first search result(https://hub.docker.com/_/mysql/) will take you to the official MySQL server container(s). You can download this prebuilt server by issuing the pull command. 

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docker pull mysql:5.5

In order to start MySQL server, you can run the following command

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docker run --name mp-mysql-server -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root123 -e MYSQL_DATABASE=ems -p 3306:3306 -d -v  C:/Users/manju/docker/mysql:/var/lib/mysql mysql:5.5

The following command will show the list of running containers. You can obtain the unique identifier for the container from the output.

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docker ps

The following command can be used to SSH into a running container.

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docker exec -it <container-id> bash

To stop the container you can use the stop or kill commands.

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docker kill <container-id>

How this impacts me

Having a docker powered environment has a positive effect on my QA workflow. For example, I may be asked to validate the install guide of a web application. I can spin off various versions of PostgreSQL or MySQL and point the application to that.