Docker and Microsoft: Integrating Docker with Windows Server and Microsoft Azure

I’m excited to announce today that Microsoft is partnering with Docker, Inc to enable great container-based development experiences on Linux, Windows Server and Microsoft Azure.

Docker is an open platform that enables developers and administrators to build, ship, and run distributed applications. Consisting of Docker Engine, a lightweight runtime and packaging tool, and Docker Hub, a cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows, Docker enables apps to be quickly assembled from components and eliminates the friction between development, QA, and production environments.

Earlier this year, Microsoft released support for Docker containers with Linux on Azure.  This support integrates with the Azure VM agent extensibility model and Azure command-line tools, and makes it easy to deploy the latest and greatest Docker Engine in Azure VMs and then deploy Docker based images within them.  

Docker Support for Windows Server + Docker Hub integration with Microsoft Azure

Today, I’m excited to announce that we are working with Docker, Inc to extend our support for Docker much further.  Specifically, I’m excited to announce that:

1) Microsoft and Docker are integrating the open-source Docker Engine with the next release of Windows Server.  This release of Windows Server will include new container isolation technology, and support running both .NET and other application types (Node.js, Java, C++, etc) within these containers.  Developers and organizations will be able to use Docker to create distributed, container-based applications for Windows Server that leverage the Docker ecosystem of users, applications and tools.  It will also enable a new class of distributed applications built with Docker that use Linux and Windows Server images together.

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2) We will support the Docker client natively on Windows.  Developers and administrators running Windows will be able to use the same standard Docker client and interface to deploy and manage Docker based solutions with both Linux and Windows Server environments.

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3) Docker for Windows Server container images will be available in the Docker Hub alongside the Docker for Linux container images available today.  This will enable developers and administrators to easily share and automate application workflows using both Windows Server and Linux Docker images.

4) We will integrate Docker Hub with the Microsoft Azure Gallery and Azure Management Portal.  This will make it trivially easy to deploy and run both Linux and Windows Server based Docker images in Microsoft Azure.

5) Microsoft is contributing code to Docker’s Open Orchestration APIs.  These APIs provide a portable way to create multi-container Docker applications that can be deployed into any datacenter or cloud provider environment. This support will allow a developer or administrator using the Docker command line client to launch either Linux or Windows Server based Docker applications directly into Microsoft Azure from his or her development machine.

Exciting Opportunities Ahead

At Microsoft we continue to be inspired by technologies that can dramatically improve how quickly teams can bring new solutions to market. The partnership we are announcing with Docker today will enable developers and administrators to use the best container tools available for both Linux and Windows Server based applications, and to run all of these solutions within Microsoft Azure.  We are looking forward to seeing the great applications you build with them.

You can learn more about today’s announcements here and here.

Hope this helps,

Scott

16 Comments

  • The announcement is interesting, but i am not sure I feel the pain of deploying distributed apps in azure on windows, with .net now. This will be interesting to see what develops from this...

  • Is the v.Next approach of including all of the binaries and libraries -- including the framework -- necessary to run the app being developed inspired by Docker or is it the other way around?

  • Very exciting! As an ISV, being able to give a dockerised image to our customers with our (Windows/.NET) software and all the dependencies ready to use will make it *much* easier to support.

  • I have been looking at docker and really wanting something like this in the windows world. When will a beta of this be released that we can take for a spin?

  • Will Docker also be available on Windows 10 for developers to use?

  • We have been using Docker containers in Linux for some time to offload SharePoint 2013 / FAST 2010 Search Enhancement to a platform with a stable CUDA driver (Linux, Docker with KVM).
    So many NLP packages run better, or only run, on Linux, that this seamless integration will be welcome.
    Unfortunately for us, only the high-end CUDA cards support a CUDA Windows Driver that doesn't fall asleep...
    Feel free to contact me if you have an application to offload processing from Windows to Linux.

  • Thanks for enlightening me - I came into this article thinking Microsoft was getting into the polo-shirts-and-khaki-pants business! :-P

  • Very interesting....could this bring an end to the virtualization technology?

  • Long time we are waiting for light weight distributed system. Hope time will over soon. Good luck docker.

  • Hi Scott,

    exciting news! Really good to see that Microsoft and the Azure Team brings good things from the Open Source World to the Microsoft stack and also investing time, resources and money into it.
    Keep it up! Great work...!
    Felix

  • Item 1 reads "…It will also enable a new class of distributed applications built with Docker that use Linux and Windows Server images together."

    Does this mean an image created with Docker can be run on both Windows Server and Linux? Even an image created with .NET? If so, is that some sort of Monofied version?

    This article leads me to believe yes but my gut instinct is telling me no. I have a feeling that only the Docker packing system will be used and 'Windows' images will be restricted to Window Server environments.

    Clarification would be appreciated.

  • Great Combination when Windows/Linux Meets....

  • cDevWorkflow, .net based next generation workflow product uses its own algorithms today to perform distributed processing of the workflow load, Docker support within the windows server platform might be something we might consider in the future for distributed processing.

  • We're close to open-sourcing eCAP, a comprehensive cloud provisioning, deployment and orchestration framework and contemplating integrating Docker for packaging. It'd be interesting to know more about Docker's orchestration futures and how they compare to the requirements we're needing to meet for businesses and Federal agencies. Is there a roadmap for orchestration?

  • What @Michael says.
    Does this mean you can run a Dockerized .Net app on a Linux machine?

  • Will you also support Windows Dockerized apps on Linux and if not officially supported will you prevent the containerized windows from running by allowing the container to check the host OS?

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