Big news yesterday for fans of agnostic cloud/on-prem computing.
Docker -the application virtualization stack that’s caught on like wildfire among the *nix set- is coming to Windows.
Yeah baby.
Under the terms of the agreement announced today, the Docker Engine open source runtime for building, running and orchestrating containers will work with the next version of Windows Server. The Docker Engine for Windows Server will be developed as a Docker open source project, with Microsoft participating as an active community member. Docker Engine images for Windows Server will be available in the Docker Hub. The Docker Hub will also be integrated directly into Azure so that it is accessible through the Azure Management Portal and Azure Gallery. Microsoft also will be contributing to Docker’s open orchestration application programming interfaces (APIs).
When I first heard the news, emotion was mixed.
On the one hand, I love it. Virtualization of all flavors -OS, storage, network, and application- is where I want to be, as a blogger, at home in my lab, and professionally.
Yet, as a Windows guy (I dabble, of course), Docker was just a bit out of reach for me, even with my lab, which is 100% Windows.
On the other hand, I also remembered how dreadful it used to be to run Linux applications on Windows. Installing GTK+ Libraries on Windows isn’t fun, and the end-result often isn’t very attractive. In my world, keeping the two separate on the application & OS side/uniting them via Kerberos and/or https/rest has always been my preference.
But that’s old world thinking, ladies and gentlemen.
Because you see, this announcement from Microsoft & Docker Inc sounds deep, rich, functional. Microsoft’s going to contribute some of its Server code to the Docker folks, and the Docker crew will help build Container tech into Windows Server and Azure. I’m hopeful Docker will just be another Role in Server, and that Jeffrey Snover’s powershell cmdlets will hook deep into the Docker stuff.
This probably marks the death of App-V, which I wrote about in comparison to Docker just last month, but that’s fine with me.
Docker on Windows marks a giant step forward for Agnostic Computing…do we dare imagine a future in which our application stacks are portable? Today I’m running an application in a Docker Container on Azure, and tomorrow I move it to AWS?
Microsoft says that’s exactly the vision:
Docker is an open source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a portable, self-sufficient container that can run almost anywhere. This partnership will enable the Docker client to manage multi-container applications using both Linux and Windows containers, regardless of the hosting environment or cloud provider. This level of interoperability is what we at MS Open Tech strive to deliver through contributions to open source projects such as Docker.
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