Virtualisation has been a very popular technique for both development and production systems for many years. It allows multiple software environments to run on the same physical machine.
Containerisation takes this idea even further. It allows you to segment your software environment down to the level of individual software packages. This means you can install multiple copies of MariaDB on one system, and run them in parallel while keeping them isolated from each other.
This is a very powerful technique when doing development because you can quickly test different versions of the software. It also allows you to experiment with clusters: you can create a complete Galera database cluster on a single computer!
If you’d like to experiment with running MariaDB in Docker containers, have a look at our introductory guide: Installing and using MariaDB via Docker.
Do you have any tips to share about running MariaDB in Docker containers? Please add them to the guide or comment below.