

Docker and Microsoft announce more innovation to cross platforms and win hearts - ghosh
http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/06/23/docker-and-microsoft-announce-more-innovation-to-cross-platforms-and-win-hearts

======
atomi
Some folks aren't clear on the limitations. Linux containers will never run on
bare metal using Windows Server OS. Virtualization will be required and you
will incur that performance penalty. This is Microsoft appeasing it's current
users. They aren't making any effort to get folks to switch from Linux as far
as I can tell.

~~~
luisrudge
You're wrong. They don't care if you run Windows or Linux. They want you to
run it on Azure.

~~~
rbanffy
With the tooling we have now, it makes no difference where the workload runs.
As long as you avoid APIs that are not common (and you easily can), you can
pretty much deploy your applications unchanged on AWS, GCE, Azure, Rackspace
or your own metal, leaving them to compete on price.

For Microsoft, it's a losing game.

The only segment I imagine they can have a competitive offering is with
Windows servers and Windows-based infrastructure (such as hosting your
Exchange or Dynamics).

------
fixxer
My experiences running Docker on Ubuntu on MS virtualization have been
negative to lukewarm. First annoyance was dealing with dynamic memory
allocation for the linux host, which works fine (I'm told) for Windows VMs,
but had to be turned off. Second was some DNS issues, but it could just be
that we have a shitty admin.

Nevertheless, Linux (and by extension Docker) and Windows are strange
bedfellows IMO. I don't get the alliance from MS perspective.

Perhaps they're trying to focus on being a platform for developers, similar to
Apple? The MS fans I work with love their interface... They just don't love
paying license fees for production apps.

~~~
CoreySanders
Thanks for the comments, fixxer. For the comment on memory allocation, I would
love to know more details about where you saw problems as we are always trying
to make Linux run better on Azure (and Hyper-V). For DNS, I would be surprised
if this was the virtualization stack although it can be tricky to set-up DNS
in the cloud.

For our partnership with Docker, it has already been very valuable to MS. With
Azure, we want to offer customers and partners the ability and flexibility to
deploy applications from any ecosystem and find many of our customers want to
deploy both Windows and Linux as part of their application. For us, Docker
offers an amazing API that spans the underlying container technology, for both
Windows Server and Linux, to enable deployment, management and orchestration
with the exact same tools and solutions. For example, the same Docker Client
works against a Windows Server host and a Linux host.

We are excited to continue to partner with the Docker community, as our
customers really do want this consistent experience, on Azure, on-premises and
even in other clouds across Windows and Linux.

~~~
taylorbrown
I will second Corey's request - we've been working to make sure that dynamic
memory and other features of Hyper-V are first class experiences on Linux, if
you can share details on what issues and what versions you had them on that
would be really helpful.

~~~
fixxer
Sure. I'll ask for logs tomorrow. Emails?

------
vezzy-fnord
I wish people would stop butchering the word "innovation" as it pertains to
software, though I realize this is a press release.

That said, I am interested how the Windows Server subsystems are going to be
extended/rearchitected into enabling Docker. A verbatim compatibility layer
for Linux namespaces and cgroups, or an LPAR-esque mechanism of their own that
could potentially be used to build Windows-only container solutions that
harness its specific powers?

------
megaman821
What is this multiplatform container application they talk about? Is it a
Hyper-V container with small Linux runtime? Or a docker-compose file with some
containers running on Windows and some on Linux (e.g. ASP.NET on Windows and
Redis on Linux)?

~~~
CoreySanders
Great question. Because the containers pull from the underlying host operating
system, you will be able to deploy a Windows Server Container on a Windows
Server host but you cannot deploy a Linux container on a Windows Server host
(and vice versa).

However, you can run either a Windows VM or a Linux VM on Hyper-V (or in
Azure).

Also, you can now run .NET applications on Windows or Linux. But that is a bit
orthogonal to your question. :)

Hopefully that helps.

------
dang
Is this different from what was announced yesterday, and if it is, can someone
please give us an accurate non-PR-speak title?

~~~
CoreySanders
Let me give it a shot, very succinctly (although I am constantly being told I
am too verbose). Here is what Mark demo'd today at DockerCon:

1) We showed an application deployment, using Docker, of a Windows Server
Container (running Node) and a Linux container (running .NET). The exact same
Docker client can be used for deployment and managing both.

2) We showed DockerHub integration in Visual Studio Code with intelligent code
complete (it auto-fills the DockerHub image you want). Visual Studio Code is a
free version of Visual Studio that runs on MAC/Ubuntu:
[https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

3) We showed Visual Studio Online continuous integration that packaged and
deployed a Docker container using Swarm/Compose on Azure.

4) We showed Azure Marketplace deployment of DockerHub images, that will
deploy and configure multiple Docker containers onto Azure Linux VMs (we
showed one that deploys both a wordpress and MySQL container on a single Linux
host using compose).

5) We showed the Docker Trusted Registry image available to deploy from the
Azure Marketplace.

Hopefully that helps (and has removed marketing speak? :)).

------
fpordeig
Microsoft is making the good moves to win back my heart as a developer. But
the biggest one is still missing: a plan to kill ie<10 quickly.

