SQL Server + Linux

Microsoft has released a public preview of SQL Server for Linux

As of the time of this writing there are three supported platforms for SQL Server on Linux:

1. Red Hat Enterprise 7.2

2. Ubuntu 16.04

3. Linux-based Docker engine

SQL Server on Linux is the vNext version, which was out for general availability in 2017. If you have a SQL licence, you can choose to deploy on Linux or Windows.  Many of the features are not yet available including:

• full-text search

• replication

• Stretch DB (extend a database to Azure)

• Polybase (query data warehouses)

• Always on availability groups

• Active Directory authentication

• SQL Server Agent

• SQL Server R Services

• Analysis Services

• Reporting Services

• Integration Services

• Data Quality Services

• Master Data Services. CLR (.NET Runtime) stored procedures

Installation instructions are available here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup-ubuntu

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is not available on Linux, though there is no problem connecting to a Linux SQL Server instance from Windows SQL Server Studio Manager.

The installation is straight forward and requires just a few apt-get commands.  Below is a screenshot showing SQL Server running on my Ubuntu VM: