To be fair, building the average Windows Container image doesn't usually take hours -- that sounds like an unusual build. However, it is true that Windows Conta

To be fair, building the average Windows Container image doesn't usually take hours -- that sounds like an unusual build. However, it is true that Windows Containers are very heavy compared to Linux Docker images, and for the most part they aren't production-grade (yet). The microsoft/windowsservercore image is currently ~10-12GB. The lighter-weight microsoft/nanoserver image is ~600MB, which sounds more reasonable, but there are certain limitations. Compare this to the Alpine Linux Docker image at ~5MB. It takes significantly longer to provision an Azure Container Instance (ACI) running a Windows Container than a Linux Container. That said, if you need to run Win64 or .NET Framework binaries (say from a proprietary vendor), Windows Containers are your only choice... else you have to spin-up a full blown VM. That said, .NET core running on Linux containers and connecting to open-source databases are a reasonable alternative. Devs tell me that .NET core itself is still pretty new so while it works for the most part, teething issues are to be expected.