Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview now includes containers

Microsoft posted an outline of all the new features introduced in this release.

Microsoft took to its Server & Cloud Blog to talk about how Server Containers are shaping up, both as a Microsoft project and as a joint effort with Docker and the rest of the Open Container Initiative, or OCI (of which Microsoft is a member). Of course, Windows Server Containers don’t run on Linux – they run on Microsoft’s OS, and are designed to let users packages applications built to run on Windows Server or the.Net framework.

“You can’t have a discussion on cloud computing lately without talking about containers”, said Microsoft Azure’s CTO Mark Russinovich.

Also new in this preview release is a bunch of networking enhancements, which are among the data centre capabilities that Microsoft is bringing to Windows Server from its Azure public cloud platform.

Of course, while system-level virtualization has been a tremendous win in terms of letting organizations consolidate hardware usage, optimize management, and decrease operational costs, the reality is that isolating applications into their own, discrete, copies of an entire ecosystem (i.e., an operating system) comes with some overhead. Earlier this week the two talked about the progress made so far and gave some clues to what customers should expect once the next Windows Server hits the street sometime in 2016. This reduces the memory these processes use and enables Windows 10 to keep more applications in memory at the same time.

If you look closely, you will find other improvements. “Developers and IT alike are under tremendous pressure to accelerate the speed and agility required to serve the business”, he said.

Move over, Docker, and make room for Microsoft in the emerging market for software containers.

“You’ve probably seen the momentum building around container technologies as a new approach to simplifying the development and deployment of applications”. Because each container is small and isolated, they should help create applications that are less monolithic and more secure.

Schuh also linked to an associated entry in the bug tracker, which referred to requests by both Microsoft and Intel to Google to change Chrome “to work better with their ongoing ROP mitigation efforts”. If you want to join the fray, you can opt into the program by going to the Settings app > Update & Security > Advanced options under “Get Insider Builds”. The idea of running apps separately isn’t exactly a new one, but this is a large step towards easy integration into a base operating system.