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!Everything you need to know about containerizing existing apps on Windows
It’s been almost 7 years since we released the first version of Windows containers on Windows Server 2016. I was there to watch the launch and remember even the early adopter versions. So much has changed since then. However, there’s one thing customers have asked since then that we haven’t really addressed in writing – A complete guide on what can be containerized on Windows containers.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.Docker Host network alternatives for Windows containers
One of the things I like to do on my spare time is browse around forums, such as Reddit, Stack Overflow, and others, to check on questions people have around Windows containers that are not showing up on comments or here on Tech Community. Recently, a few topics emerged more than once, so I thought I should blog about it to cover in more details. The first one is about Docker Host Network on Windows containers.How to change the user account for Windows Containers
Containers in general are seen as a turnkey solution to run applications. Once the app has been finalized, you expect the container to run the same way regardless of the environment. However, just like any other platform, there are some important aspects that need to change between development and production – especially when it comes to identity and security. By default, Windows containers run with a user account called ContainerAdmintrator which has admin access inside the container instance. If compromised, this container instance will allow an attacker to take control over shared resources – such as, but not limited to, mounted volumes. For that reason, whenever running on multi-tenant or least privileged environments we recommend to use the ContainerUser profile.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.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: #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.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.
