GREAT!
Microsoft announced that it would add Linux-like container technology to a future version of Windows
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Interesting times!
Hmmm, I wonder why? Just to run Linux applications?
From the public stuff I have read (I work for MS, but not in this area), it is based on the same approach, but uses a windows kernel as the core that the containers share, so, same kind of deal, but with a shared win kernel instead of shared Linux kernel.
There will also be a release of Win Server 2016 as a stripped down ‘nano server’ that takes up only a fraction of the space of the full Windows Server image, but which is only capable of hosting containers. Everything else you need, you bring with you in the containers.
Where it does match up with docker is that all the same docker tools and procedures can be used to administer the new Windows containers - your containers just have to contain win-compatible stuff instead of Linux-based stuff.
I suspect that means you use cmd and Powershell instead of bash, unless you bring along a bash shell, for instance; and windows PE images instead of Linux images.
This does increase the utility of .Net images, since you could still conceivably create cross-platform containers with the new cross-platform .Net CoreCLR, etc and mono.
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Docker isn’t a virtualization technology, it’s a set of management tools on top of Linux’s already-existing process containerization technology, called cgroups.
Microsoft announced that they were making the same sort of functionality available in Windows, i.e. the ability to “containerize” a set of processes, and that they would make this technology compatible with the Docker management tools.