Microsoft Unveils First Glimpse Of Windows Server 2016 Containers

Microsoft has announced the availability of its third technical preview for Windows Server 2016, and with it the first real taste of using container technology with the platform.

“You can’t have a discussion on cloud computing lately without talking about containers,” said Microsoft Azure’s CTO Mark Russinovich.

Nano Server

It’s been three months since Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2, and also brings eager fans the support for deployments of Nano Server, a smaller model of the Windows Server.

Including support for containers will keep software companies who like using Windows Server happy, as more and more customer switch to using containers in virtual machines. Container giant Docker has really been a main part of Linux, but now it seems containers will also play a large role in Windows’ future.

“To bring the power of containers to all developers, last October we announced plans to implement container technology in Windows Server. To enable developers that use Linux Docker containers with the exact same experience on Windows Server, we also announced our partnership with Docker to extend the Docker API and toolset to support Windows Server Containers,” said Russinovich.

Windows Server 2016 will be getting two different kinds of containers, both able to be deployed using Docker APIs and the Docker client. The two flavours are Windows Server Containers and Hyper-V Containers.

“Linux containers require Linux APIs from the host kernel and Windows Server Containers require the Windows APIs of a host Windows kernel, so you cannot run Linux containers on a Windows Server host or a Windows Server Container on a Linux host,” explained Russinovich.

“However, the same Docker client can manage all of these containers, and while you can’t run a packaged Windows container on Linux, a Windows container package works with Windows Server Containers and Hyper-V Containers because they both utilize the Windows kernel.”

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