Running Drill on Docker

Introduced in release: 1.14

You can run Drill in a Docker container. Running Drill in a container gives a simple way to start using Drill; all you need is Docker installed on your machine. You simply run a Docker command, and your installation will download the Drill Docker image from the apache/drill repository on Docker Hub and bring up a container with Apache Drill running in embedded mode.

Currently, you can only run Drill in embedded mode in a Docker container. Embedded mode is when a single instance of Drill runs on a node or in a container. You do not have to perform any configuration tasks to start using Drill to query local files in embedded mode.

Prerequisites

You must have Docker version 18 or later installed on your machine.

Running Drill in a Docker Container

You can start and run a Docker container in detached mode or foreground mode. Detached mode runs the container in the background. Foreground is the default mode. Foreground mode runs the Drill process in the container and attaches the console to Drill’s standard input, output, and standard error.

Whether you run the Docker container in detached or foreground mode, you start Drill in a container by issuing the docker run command with some options, as described in the following table:

Option	Description
`-i`	Keeps STDIN open. STDIN is standard input, an input stream where data is sent to and read by a program.
`-t`	Allocates a pseudo-tty (a shell).
`--name`	Identifies the container. If you do not use this option to identify a name for the container, the daemon generates a container ID for you. When you use this option to identify a container name, you can use the name to reference the container within a Docker network in foreground or detached mode.
`-p`	The TCP port for the Drill Web UI. If needed, you can change this port using the `drill.exec.http.port` start-up option.
`apache/drill:<version>`	The Docker Hub repository and tag. In the following example, `apache/drill` is the repository and `1.17.0` is the tag: `apache/drill:1.17.0`. The tag correlates with the version of Drill. When a new version of Drill is available, you can use the new version as the tag.
`bin/bash`	Connects to the Drill container using a bash shell.

Running the Drill Docker Container in Foreground Mode

Open a terminal window (Command Prompt or PowerShell, but not PowerShell ISE) and then issue the following command and options to connect to SQLLine (the Drill shell):

docker run -i --name drill-1.19.0 -p 8047:8047 -t apache/drill:1.19.0 /bin/bash

When you issue the docker run command, the Drill process starts in a container. SQLLine prints a message, and the prompt appears:

   Apache Drill 1.19.0
   "json ain't no thang"
   apache drill>

At the prompt, you can enter the following simple query to verify that Drill is running:

SELECT version FROM sys.version;  

Running the Drill Docker Container in Detached Mode

Open a terminal window (Command Prompt or PowerShell, but not PowerShell ISE) and then issue the following commands and options to connect to SQLLine (the Drill shell):

Note: When you run the Drill Docker container in detached mode, you connect to SQLLine (the Drill shell) using drill-localhost.

$ docker run -i --name drill-1.19.0 -p 8047:8047 --detach -t apache/drill:1.19.0 /bin/bash
<displays container ID>

$ docker exec -it drill-1.19.0 bash
<connects to container>

$ /opt/drill/bin/drill-localhost

After you issue the commands, the Drill process starts in a container. SQLLine prints a message, and the prompt appears:

   Apache Drill 1.19.0
   "json ain't no thang"
   apache drill>

At the prompt, you can enter the following simple query to verify that Drill is running:

SELECT version FROM sys.version;  

Querying Data

By default, you can only query files that are accessible within the container. For example, you can query the sample data packaged with Drill, as shown:

SELECT first_name, last_name FROM cp.`employee.json` LIMIT 1;

|------------|-----------|
| first_name | last_name |
|------------|-----------|
| Sheri      | Nowmer    |
|------------|-----------|
1 row selected (0.256 seconds)  

To query files outside of the container, you can configure Docker volumes.

Drill Web UI

You can access the Drill web UI at http://localhost:8047 when the Drill Docker container is running. On Windows, you may need to specify the IP address of your system instead of using “localhost”.

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