At Microsoft Build 2018, Microsoft announced a new Windows container image, next to the Windows Server Core container image and the Nano Server container image. This new Windows container image is for applications and workloads which need additional API dependencies beyond Nano Server and Windows Server Core.
With the release of the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 17704), you can now download a preview of that container image. Your container host will need to run at least on the Windows Insider build 17704.
Windows Container Image
The IT world is transforming and Microsoft can see a huge demand by customers for containers. However the container images available today, Nano Server and Windows Server Core are lightweight versions of Windows and not including some of the components of Windows. A huge scenario for containers is to put legacy applications into containers. With the new Windows container image, Microsoft is offering a new option for applications who need more components which are not included in Windows Server Core, like DirectX or proofing support.
Microsoft Windows Container Images
As of today, Microsoft offers 3 container images in preview:
| Image | Version | Size |
|---|---|---|
| mcr.microsoft.com/nanoserver-insider | 10.0.17704.1000 | 232 MB |
| mcr.microsoft.com/windowsservercore-insider | 10.0.17704.1000 | 3.38 GB |
| mcr.microsoft.com/windows-insider | 10.0.17704.1000 | 8.07 GB |
Getting started with Windows Containers
First you need to have a host running Windows Insider Preview Build 17704 or higher. After that you can simply use docker to get the latest Insider container images from the Microsoft Container Registry:
docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/nanoserver-insider docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/windowsservercore-insider docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/windows-insider
You can read more about the new Windows Container image here on the Microsoft Virtualization Blog.
If you want to know more about the production Container Images for Windows, check out my blog post: Docker Container Images for Windows Server 1709 and new tagging
Tags: Container, Container Image, Containers, Docker, Kubernetes, Microsoft, Nano Server, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Container Image, Windows Server, Windows Sevrer Core Last modified: August 22, 2018
