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I am really curious, who is actually using Windows containers in a way that's critical to their business? (i.e. your main web app, not giving some janky legacy

I am really curious, who is actually using Windows containers in a way that's critical to their business? (i.e. your main web app, not giving some janky legacy Windows thing a place to live while you migrate away from it) I have to imagine at some point probably very soon all of the time spent maintaining and hacking in the NT kernel to work in a container world is just throwing good money at a vanishingly small segment of the market. kudos to this team for being on the ball and supporting ARM and ARM64 images though. Now when can we actually run ARM64 stuff on Azure....

vyrotek 6y ago
There are large and successful companies with very modern enterprise apps communicating with old stuff like AS400 mainframe systems. These and many other companies also have generations of (not quite as old) Windows applications that aren't going anywhere anytime soon either. These companies want to manage it all in a modern way. Sometimes, it's part of the migration strategy.
foepys 6y ago
Hacker News represents only a pretty small fraction of the IT world. There are many, many companies out there doing things Hacker News never heard of because it's not related to web or startups. What I do at my day job would be considered legacy tech here on HN but my company is a multi million dollar profitable business working in the B2B sector. Our customers don't want flashy websites, they want software that works over many years with minimal maintenance burden running on their own hardware. Microsoft Windows is still dominant in the business world because the often external IT knows how to work on it and most of the time it just works.
runjake 6y ago
I don’t know anyone using Windows Containers in production. Even Microsoft is using Linux containers for production dotnet deployments.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I would pay to see SharePoint and Dynamics running on Linux containers. Don't judge what Microsoft is doing, with the .NET Core teams are marketing for.
pjmlp 6y ago
I am, there is no reason for .NET developers to deploy on Linux containers, and castrate ourselves to libraries only available in .NET Core. Also outside HN universe, Windows servers are a thing, so it is not only .NET, there are also Java and C++ applications.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Barring GUI libraries that depend on WinForms/WPF, surely there are very few libraries now only available for dotnet framework? I work at a consultancy for enterprise-size orgs, and Windows servers are indeed still frequently used - but almost exclusively on-prem, and I've never even once come across Windows containers being used. Seems the shift to the cloud, and Microsoft's shift to OSS and Linux love, has tamed even the most fervent of Microsoft shops. 10 years ago you'd be laughed at if you suggested anything other than Windows, but now it's the default for anything in the cloud.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Sitecore, Sharepoint, Dynamics, EF 6 and WCF in-house frameworks, and plenty of third party solutions on the Windows ecosystem. All the cloud based deployments I have done, other than a couple of serverless microservices on AWS Lambda, have been done on Windows and that won't change for the foreseeable future in what concerns the kind of customers I work with. In fact, it is a bit ironic that instead of getting advises from cloud experts, I am the one with my lower skill set in the domain, to have to explain to them what is to be expected for production delivery.
    - legulere 6y ago
      EF 6 runs on net core: https://www.nuget.org/packages/EntityFramework/ https://www.nuget.org/packages/EntityFramework/
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Partially, not everything that is part of EF 6, specially VS designers. Don't take marketing for the full use in production environments. Also we can keep doing this game, there are plenty of enterprise tools I can list. .NET Core is the Python 3 of .NET world.
GordonS 6y ago
I've seen a few people answer this question in the affirmative in previous threads, but I've never seen Windows containers in the wild yet. I work for a consultancy for enterprises, so if it was commonplace I would have expected to see them at least once. Obviously not doubting anyone else; just saying I think it must be pretty rare.
- runfaster2000 6y ago
  I provided an answer in the blog post post comments. We see it most big corps and government. We also see Linux in those same places. If there are big Windows Server apps (typically .NET Framework) that people want to host in the cloud, then they often choose Windows Containers as the lowest friction solution, at least for step one. I work closely with the Windows Container team, and this is what I see from their customer engagements. Inside Microsoft, it is the same. Many big services at Microsoft have hard dependencies on Windows (both .NET Framework and Win32), and at the same time, many have also embraced Linux.
SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
> I am really curious, who is actually using Windows containers in a way that's critical to their business? Valid question, but not exactly what the article is about. .NET Containers != Windows Containers From the article: > . We publish updated .NET images for Alpine, Debian, and Ubuntu

vyrotek 6y ago

There are large and successful companies with very modern enterprise apps communicating with old stuff like AS400 mainframe systems. These and many other companies also have generations of (not quite as old) Windows applications that aren't going anywhere anytime soon either. These companies want to manage it all in a modern way. Sometimes, it's part of the migration strategy.

foepys 6y ago

Hacker News represents only a pretty small fraction of the IT world. There are many, many companies out there doing things Hacker News never heard of because it's not related to web or startups. What I do at my day job would be considered legacy tech here on HN but my company is a multi million dollar profitable business working in the B2B sector. Our customers don't want flashy websites, they want software that works over many years with minimal maintenance burden running on their own hardware. Microsoft Windows is still dominant in the business world because the often external IT knows how to work on it and most of the time it just works.

runjake 6y ago

I don’t know anyone using Windows Containers in production. Even Microsoft is using Linux containers for production dotnet deployments.

pjmlp 6y ago
I would pay to see SharePoint and Dynamics running on Linux containers. Don't judge what Microsoft is doing, with the .NET Core teams are marketing for.

pjmlp 6y ago

I am, there is no reason for .NET developers to deploy on Linux containers, and castrate ourselves to libraries only available in .NET Core. Also outside HN universe, Windows servers are a thing, so it is not only .NET, there are also Java and C++ applications.

GordonS 6y ago
Barring GUI libraries that depend on WinForms/WPF, surely there are very few libraries now only available for dotnet framework? I work at a consultancy for enterprise-size orgs, and Windows servers are indeed still frequently used - but almost exclusively on-prem, and I've never even once come across Windows containers being used. Seems the shift to the cloud, and Microsoft's shift to OSS and Linux love, has tamed even the most fervent of Microsoft shops. 10 years ago you'd be laughed at if you suggested anything other than Windows, but now it's the default for anything in the cloud.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Sitecore, Sharepoint, Dynamics, EF 6 and WCF in-house frameworks, and plenty of third party solutions on the Windows ecosystem. All the cloud based deployments I have done, other than a couple of serverless microservices on AWS Lambda, have been done on Windows and that won't change for the foreseeable future in what concerns the kind of customers I work with. In fact, it is a bit ironic that instead of getting advises from cloud experts, I am the one with my lower skill set in the domain, to have to explain to them what is to be expected for production delivery.
  - legulere 6y ago
    EF 6 runs on net core: https://www.nuget.org/packages/EntityFramework/ https://www.nuget.org/packages/EntityFramework/
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Partially, not everything that is part of EF 6, specially VS designers. Don't take marketing for the full use in production environments. Also we can keep doing this game, there are plenty of enterprise tools I can list. .NET Core is the Python 3 of .NET world.

GordonS 6y ago

I've seen a few people answer this question in the affirmative in previous threads, but I've never seen Windows containers in the wild yet. I work for a consultancy for enterprises, so if it was commonplace I would have expected to see them at least once. Obviously not doubting anyone else; just saying I think it must be pretty rare.

runfaster2000 6y ago
I provided an answer in the blog post post comments. We see it most big corps and government. We also see Linux in those same places. If there are big Windows Server apps (typically .NET Framework) that people want to host in the cloud, then they often choose Windows Containers as the lowest friction solution, at least for step one. I work closely with the Windows Container team, and this is what I see from their customer engagements. Inside Microsoft, it is the same. Many big services at Microsoft have hard dependencies on Windows (both .NET Framework and Win32), and at the same time, many have also embraced Linux.

SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago

> I am really curious, who is actually using Windows containers in a way that's critical to their business? Valid question, but not exactly what the article is about. .NET Containers != Windows Containers From the article: > . We publish updated .NET images for Alpine, Debian, and Ubuntu