10 Things You Should Know About Microsoft’s Container Strategy

Microsoft’s romance with containers started in last June when it announced support for Docker extensions for Linux VMs running on Azure. Since then Redmond has been steadily making progress with its container strategy. Recently, Microsoft joined Open Container Initiative (OCI) as the founding member pledging its support for maintaining common container format and runtime. In the latest technical preview of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft finally made native Windows Container technology available to developers and system administrators.

Thanks to media attention and the positive buzz – for many customers, containers are synonymous with Docker. It’s also amply clear that Docker, Inc. open sourced the technology behind containers, and it only runs on Linux. Given these facts, there is confusion in the developer community on Microsoft’s support for container technology. In various blog posts and events, Microsoft highlighted its investments in containers. Microsoft execs didn’t shy away from telling us how much they love Docker and the team behind it. This positioning led to a bit of ambiguity around Microsoft’s container strategy. I have heard developers asking if they can run Linux containers on Windows and vice versa. There is enough confusion around Docker, Windows Containers, and Hyper-V Containers.

 I am attempting to demystify Microsoft’s container strategy through a set of data points.

1) Microsoft’s container strategy is not about portability – Let me get this straight. You cannot push a Docker Image from Linux and pull it on a Windows machine to launch the container. The underlying kernel differences between the two operating systems make it extremely hard to make containers portable. In the past, Microsoft did attempt to bring a POSIX compliant UNIX subsystem called Services for Unix. But, that’s a different story. Coming back to containers, you cannot emulate “Package once deploy everywhere” with Microsoft containers. Period.

Read the entire article at Forbes.

Janakiram MSV is an analyst, advisor, and architect. Follow him on Twitter,  Facebook and LinkedIn.