Microsoft worked with Docker, lead commercial supporter of the open-source Docker application container virtualization platform, on its implementation of Windows Server Containers, Schutz said.
Users will get the first public preview of Windows Server Containers in Microsoft’s third technical preview of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016. Thanks to the overall momentum that containers are now enjoying, developers want to be able to use them, so Microsoft also has to give IT the tools to manage them.
Windows Server Containers use a similar container-based approach to Docker, in that all the containers running on a single server share the same operating system kernel, making them smaller and more responsive than standard virtual machines.
Developers have been begging for container support in Windows Server for some time now, and the introduction of this feature could be the start of Microsoft offering up some serious competition to Linux server software.
Windows Server 2016 will be getting two different kinds of containers, both able to be deployed using Docker APIs and the Docker client. Until Microsoft jumped on board, after all, Docker was mainly a Linux technology.
“A huge number of our customers are Windows-only, so what we are doing here is bringing the power of containers to them in their native operating system”, said Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure CTO. Windows Server, of course, is a version of Windows that runs atop servers.
In addition, Microsoft will also release a fortified container for applications that require strong security, based on Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtual machine. These types of containers will offer higher isolation between containers by running their own copy of the Windows kernel and having memory assigned directly to them. (VMware has also partnered with Docker to enable the deployment of containers in VMs.) But beyond that, Docker has been primarily a Linux technology – that is, until Microsoft came along to make containers a first-class citizen in Windows. Support for Hyper-V containers on Windows Server, however, won’t arrive until the next preview. In terms of bringing developers onboard, the company announced new “Docker tooling for Visual Studio”, Schutz said. The company is also integrating features such as Nano Server functionality and improving its software-defined datacenter tools in an age where many enterprises are looking for ways to accelerate the movement of apps from development to production – and continually improve them.
Microsoft is also delivering a scalable network controller for centralized network configuration and software load balancer for high availability and performance.
A full breakdown of what’s new in the release is available here, and the official release notes can be viewed here.