Installing ADE in a Docker image

This page guides you through the process of building a Docker image with an installed ADE. The configuration will allow ADE to run in a single Container at one time.

This is not an introduction to Docker or Docker for Windows. It is assumed that the reader consults other sources for that background.

Licensing

The standard End-User License Agreement, or EULA, for the ADE individual license allows you to run ADE on one production server. This would not be consistent with an elastic deployment of containers that spins up an unlimited number of containers, each being a virtualized server instance. The instructions on this page are consistent with the ADE EULA, in that it will allow you to launch a since container with ADE. If your use case differs, you'll need to discuss alternative licensing arrangements with Lumina.

The use of a single container is still quite valuable for deployment purposes separate from the elastic use case.

To proceed you need to have purchased an ADE subscription and received an ADE activation key from Lumina.

Setup for your development computer

Before building your Docker image, you'll need to install Docker Desktop for Windows. After installing it, right-click on the Docker icon in your tray and select Switch to Windows containers.... If you don't see the docker icon in your Windows tray, or don't see the context menu, launch Docker Desktop as Administrator one time. We've found that doing so once seems to fix that problem.

Create a new folder for your docker source, for example it might be: D:\ADE_image. Create a subfolder inside named D\Ade_image\Content.

If you have previously installed ADE 6.5 on this development computer, then copy the "C:\Program Files\Lumina\ADE 6.5" folder into your Content folder. If it is not installed on your computer and you won't be using ADE on this computer, you can run the ADE installer and install it into "D:\ADE_image\Content\ADE 6.5", leaving the activation code blank.