@MattSN created a great article some while ago on how to run your MID server from Docker basically within minutes: Instant MID Server with Docker
This week I had the challenge to get the MID server installed on a windows host. Usually this is a piece of cake as long as you stay within the defined system requirements. Namely these are for Windows as Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. In my case though, I needed it on a Windows 10 Pro desktop.
If you wonder why, it is for a PoC with one of my customers where I have been given some mock web services we needed to integrate with. The windows host I needed to connect to was behind some firewalls, so I needed the MID on that specific host.
So I set out and did what I had to do... here is the short version on how you can do this as well and hopefully do not waste as much time as I did 😄
As already mentioned above, the windows host wasn't supported as such. But there is also the option to use a containerised MID based on Docker. Also for this one it is stated that Windows Server 2019 is required - well, it does work with Windows 10 Pro as well.
Installation
1. Get Docker
Head to https:www.docker.com and download the latest docker desktop for Windows
2. Install Docker
Execute the installation package and let it do it's work.
3. Launch Docker Desktop
4. Set Docker to run windows images
On the system tray to a right-click on the docker icon and select 'Switch to Windows containers', this will allow us to run a windows server 2019 container rather than linux. This is important! The build will fail otherwise.
5. Download Windows Docker recipe ZIP file from the MID Server download page
6. Unzip the downloaded file and place it on a nice and dry place on your drive
7. Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and navigate into the directory from above
8. Run the following command to build the image based on the recipe:
docker build . --tag mid_image
Note: this will take a moment as it downloads all required components and build the image.
Once the image has been created you can also check this in docker desktop by clicking on Images. It will list more than the MID image itself as it was downloading some intermediate ones needed to build it.
9. Create the specific container
When we create the container, we need to let it know which instance to connect to and how. The command for this is:
docker run -d \
--name my_mid_server \
--env MID_INSTANCE_URL=$instance \
--env MID_SERVER_NAME=my_mid_server \
--env MID_INSTANCE_USERNAME=$miduser \
--env MID_INSTANCE_PASSWORD=$midpassword \
mid_image
Note: The command is all in one line, you can see that better in the screenshot below.
This will create the container and start your MID server. You can check this again in the Docker Desktop when clicking on Containers:
Operating the docker MID
Now that you have your MID server you might want to know how to use and or trouble shoot it.
On the Docker Desktop application, click on the MID server container my_mid_server. It will open a new view with some tabs on top. The most important - and automatically selected - is Logs. Here you can find the agent-log of the MID Server. A successful running MID will look something like this:
On the top right of this window you have the important functions as Stop, Start, Restart or Delete.
That's all. Now you can run MID servers on your desktop machines again.
As a word of caution, this is obviously not intended for a production setup. But it can be a great help during development or for testing.
