Microsoft Announces New Windows Server Features for Containers

Microsoft announced today Hyper-V Container support to allow virtualization of Docker containers as well as a new barebones version of Windows Server called Nano Server.

Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Blog announced new features for Windows Server 2016 that adds further support for the Docker container application virtualization platform.  Docker is a platform for running individual applications in a virtualized environment called a container.  These containers can be hosted on Windows Server or Linux servers.  With the new Hyper-V support, those containers themselves can be virtualized and managed through Hyper-V.  Microsoft is actively involved in the Docker community as described in their blog post.

We have been working closely with the Docker community to leverage and extend container innovations in Windows Server and Microsoft Azure, including submitting the development of the Docker engine for Windows Server Containers as an open contribution to the Docker repository on GitHub. In addition, we’ve made it easier to deploy the latest Docker engine using Azure extensions to setup a Docker host on Azure Linux VMs and to deploy a Docker-managed VMdirectly from the Azure Marketplace. — Microsoft Servers and Cloud Blog

Microsoft also announced a new version of Windows Server called Nano Server.  This cut down version of Windows Server 2016 is designed to be used for containers.  This version has a footprint of only 5% of the full Windows Server deployment.

Nano Server provides just the components you need – nothing else, meaning smaller server images, which reduces deployment times, decreases network bandwidth consumption, and improves uptime and security.

For more information, read the full blog post on Microsoft Server and Cloud Blog.