How to run a Windows 11 VM on Hyper-V
Happy new year everyone! Last month, before the holidays I wanted to run a Windows 11 VM on Hyper-V to run a few tests on Windows containers in a different environment than my local machine. However, it took me some time to get that VM up and running, simply because I forgot about the new hardware requirements for Windows 11 and that I had to get them configured before I installed the new OS in it. This blog post is my contribution so you don’t have to go through the same!Using WSL 2 on Windows Server 2022 to run Linux containers
Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) is one of the most popular features for developers on Windows 10 and 11. It has recently been made available on Windows Server 2022. With this addition, you can now run Linux containers on WSL 2 on Windows Server 2022 for development and testing purposes.Forza Horizon 5 runs on Windows containers on Azure Kubernetes Services!
If you’re in tech, then most probably you play some kind of game – and most likely you at least heard of the Forza franchise. What you might not know is what happens behind the scenes when you turn on your Xbox and start a new race.Adding optional font packages to Windows containers
Customer feedback is the main driver for the Windows container team when planning new features and improvements to the platform. Since we launched containers in Windows Server 2016, customers have told us how a slim container image impacts the overall performance. With that in mind, we removed as much of the base container images as we could, including components such as fonts – which in most cases is not relevant. In the past few months, we also heard your feedback about scenarios that do need these fonts back for applications to properly work. Today we’ll cover how you can add fonts back to Windows containers on the Server Core base container image in a way that is supported for both Windows Server 2019 and 2022.5 tips for IIS on containers: #1 SSL certificate lifecycle management
Today, my colleague Amy Colyer and I are starting a new blog series based on our talk at Microsoft Ignite 2022. In the session we covered 5 tips for containerizing IIS applications with Windows containers. On that 45-minute session, we covered the management challenges on IIS that customers face today and how Windows containers and Azure Kubernetes Services can help with IT Ops practices. In this blog series, we will explore these tips in more detail. We will go over the management challenges, how Windows containers and other Azure services can help, and how to implement these in detail.How to Manage Containers with Windows Admin Center
As a Windows admin you know that managing containers is not as easy as managing VMs. Using PowerShell commands, writing docker files, and so on is a daunting process - specially if you want to containerize an existing application. Just recently we launched an update to the Containers extension in Windows Admin Center and today I wanted to give you a tour of the new functionality!5 tips for IIS on containers: Bonus – IIS remote management
While the intent with the Microsoft Ignite session and this blog series was to provide 5 tips for running IIS workloads on Windows containers, we could not leave this one out – so here’s a bonus blog post for you! Many times when containerizing an existing application with Windows containers, you’ll get caught on the process of writing a Docker file, to then build a container image, to then run a new container, to then test if the application work… and if it fails, you have to start all over: re-write your Docker file, then build a container image, then run a new container, then test if the application work. Depending on how complex your application is structured, this will be a tedious process. To solve that, sometimes all you need is to open the IIS MMC console and check how the configuration of your website is showing up. However, the IIS remote management is not available on Windows containers. Since this is just an additional feature, all you have to do is to enable it. Before we get started though, keep in mind this is something you can use while developing/testing your application. This should not be used in production.5 tips for IIS on containers: #5 Container and Node OS upgrade
When we presented this topic at Microsoft Ignite earlier this year, I asked the audience in the room the regular question we ask: How many of you are running Windows Server 2012 in your environment? Note that I’m not even asking about Windows Server 2008. Windows Server 2012 is already out of support. And more – if you’re not paying attention, Windows Server 2016 is already out of mainstream support! If you haven’t already, you should really start planning your upgrades. The problem is: Upgrading from old versions is hard. It’s a manual process that requires you to validate the all the components required for your app to work on the new OS version. And more: everything we covered in the previous posts on this blog series are reasons to make the upgrade process harder – making sure you manage the SSL certificates, multiple websites on a single server, hardcoded configurations, and scaling up and down. All of these just complicate the process, but if you’ve been following along and checking on how Windows Containers can help with IIS deployments, you now know how to avoid these pitfalls. Because we addressed the previous items, we’ll show how upgrading to the latest OS version is much easier with Windows containers and Azure Kubernetes Service.5 tips for IIS on containers: #3 Hardcoded configuration
We’re getting into the third topic of our blog post series about IIS on Windows containers. In case you missed, check out the blog on SSL certificate lifecycle management and IIS app pools and websites. Today, we’re covering hardcoded configurations on IIS. This blog post covers the concept on IIS, but the idea is that any type of workload going into a container and running at scale on a Kubernetes environment should follow these best practices.
