Last week was busy for the Docker team at Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta. With the exciting announcement about the next evolution of the Docker and Microsoft relationship, the availability of Docker for Windows Server 2016 workloads, the show floor, general session, keynotes, and breakout sessions were all abuzz about Docker for Windows. Whether you were attended or not we want to make sure you didn’t miss a thing, here are the key announcements at this year’s Microsoft Ignite:

Here our top 5 questions heard in the Docker booth:

What are containers?

While container technology had been around for more than a decade. However, as the leader in the containerization market, Docker has made the technology usable and accessible to all developers and sysadmins. Containers allow developers and IT Pros to package an application into a standardized unit for software development, making them highly portable and able to run across any operating system. Each container contains a complete filesystem with everything needed to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries –essentially, anything that can be installed on a server. This guarantees that the software will always run the same, regardless of its environment, without having to make any changes to the underlying code. Docker containers were previously only available to the Linux community and with the announcement of Docker for Windows Server 2016, Docker containers are now available for Windows workloads addressing 98% of enterprise workloads.

How is this different than App-V Application Virtualization?

Those in the Windows OS world are familiar with Microsoft App-V or ThinApp and naturally there were questions about comparing them to Docker containers. Application virtualization is used to package a full application with the relevant OS libraries into a single executable. Docker is a set of tooling used to build server based applications. A single application could be comprised of one or hundreds of containers connected together. App-V is used for desktop applications and are not designed for server based applications. The most common example is packaging browsers with extensions so they can access custom web apps. Each App-V package can reside on a laptop with different extensions/plugins, etc. To learn more about Application Virtualization and Docker, read our blog: There’s Application Virtualization and There’s Docker

How do I get started with Docker for Windows Server?

Integrating Visual Studio Tools for Docker and Docker for Windows provides desktop development environments for building Dockerized Windows apps. Getting started is easy and we have the tools you need to get started in a few easy steps:

Pick your tool:

The latest Anniversary update for Windows 10 offers containerization support for the Windows 10 kernel.

To run Windows containers in production at scale, download a free evaluation version Windows Server 2016 and install it on bare metal or in a VM running on Hyper-V, VirtualBox or similar.

Install a Windows Docker Engine on your system with Docker for Windows public beta on your system.

Run your first Windows Container in just a few steps with the instructions listed on the “ Getting Started with Docker for Windows” webpage. Create your own Dockerfile with our Image2Docker tool, a Powershell module that points at a virtual hard disk image, scans for common Windows components and suggest a Dockerfile . Read the blog to learn more and get started.

For a complete list of instructions read our blog post – Build And Run Your First Docker Windows Server Container & view Windows Server container base images and applications on Docker Hub from Microsoft.

How do I manage containers?

Docker Datacenter is the integrated container orchestration and management platform for IT Pros. Today Docker Datacenter is available on Azure to manage Linux application environments. With the availability of Windows Server 2016 and Docker Engine, we are planning for a beta in Q4 2016 of Docker Datacenter management for Windows Server based applications. Sign up here to be notified of the beta.

Where can I learn more?

There are lots of great resources and sessions to help you learn more. Whether you attended the conference or watched online here’s a wrap up of the top five session from Microsoft Ignite:

General Session with Scott Guthrie, EVP Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft and Daryll Fogal CTO at Tyco

Resources