Installing Sitecore 10.3 on Docker: Step-by-Step Guide

In this document, we will learn how to setup Sitecore 10.3 on docker desktop in Windows 11. We shall briefly cover the step-by-step process and overview of Sitecore 10.3 setup.
While doing the installation in my windows, I followed Installation Guide for Developer Workstation with Containers. Thanks, Sitecore Team!

Prerequisites –

To setup Sitecore 10.3 on docker, we shall need the following –

• Docker Desktop Installed on Windows Desktop
• Docker Desktop support for windows containers
• 16 GB of RAM
• Approximately 50GB of free disk space for Sitecore container images. SSD storage is highly recommended.
• The default Sitecore container configuration uses specific ports. To avoid any conflicts, we should ensure the following ports are not being used by another process: 443, 8079, 8081, 8984, and 14330

To check the prerequisites for Sitecore 10.3 installation, please check the below link –
Support Information – Sitecore compatibility table for Sitecore XP 9.0 and later

Setup Files –

• Docker-compose.yaml
• Env file
• compose-init.ps1

Installation Steps:

1. Setup docker desktop
   Run docker, then right click on the docker icon in the right bottom panel, select “Switch to Windows containers”.
   
2. Create a new folder D:\sc1030_install and download and unzip Container Deployment Package
3. Open Compose-init.ps1 file from D:\sc1030_install\SitecoreContainerDeployment.10.3.0.008463.1135\compose\ltsc2019\xp0 folder and make the below changes. Please provide correct MS SQL password.
   
4. Please copy License file in D:\license\license.xml
5. Open PowerShell as administrator. Change the directory to D:\sc1030_install\SitecoreContainerDeployment.10.3.0.008463.1135\compose\ltsc2019\xp0
6. Execute .\compose-init.ps1 -LicenseXmlPath C:\license\license.xml
   This script will set up all the environment variables in .env file.
7. Execute Docker-compose up – detach
   This should pull images from Sitecore Docker Repository
   After pull, extraction of images is complete. The containers will be deployed.
   The scripts should run for around 30 mins depending on the network.
   
8. Open Docker Dashboard and you should see Sitecore-XP0 running.
   
9. Browse the site.
   

FAQ

How to get into wwwroot of docker containers?

Execute “Docker ps” to get the list of containers and note the container name.

Now execute “docker exec -it $containerName.

How to log into SQL Server using SSMS?

Note down the port number of SQL Container. Now open SSMS, Enter “localhost, portNumber” in server and login with sa credentials.