Docker on Windows in Production

Question

I've been asked to research Docker. The question that I cannot get a definitive response to is "can you run Docker on Windows in production?".

I keep seeing "Docker image containers can run natively on Linux and Windows. However, Windows images can run only on Windows hosts and Linux images can run only on Linux hosts, meaning a host server or a VM."

I'm not interested in running containerized windows applications (.net). We have Spring Boot (java) applications & are creating a microservices architecture. These containerized apps. don't need an OS running in the same container.

We also need an orchestration engine like Kubernetes and its unclear if this is something that can run in production on windows either.

I've been fighting the good fight trying to get deployment environments switched to Linux but that's a loosing battle at this point.

Answer 1

I can highly recommend not to use Docker Desktop for Windows in Production. The host machines (Windows 10 Pro) where configured to restart everyday at a certain time and the Docker Container where Linux containers which as recommended where using the WSL2 based engine.

I was testing it on 20 devices for a over one year now and from 20 Pc's had at least 5 now the problem that Docker Desktop cannot be initialized. Which means that Docker Desktop is not starting anymore until you remove some folder(s) in %APPDATA% but when you do so it worked only 3 out of 5 times for me that Docker Desktop was able to start after that. One time needed to reinstall Docker Desktop the remaining One I needed to reload all the docker images and configure them again. Most of the issues seemed to have been a result of a power cut.

Most annoying are the updates from my perspective, because from one to the other version all images and running containers where gone and I needed to reconfigure them, happend with 2 Version in the past but not on all computer.

The Linux machines on the other hand no issues.

Answer 2

My understanding is that Containers on Windows Server should be fine for production while Containers on Windows Desktop should be only for dev and test, not production. I saw one post "MICROSOFT SOFTWARE SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE FOR WINDOWS CONTAINER BASE IMAGE" https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/images-eula, not sure how this one is related to this question?

Answer 3

First of all, I suspect this question is rather stale after 3 years. I don't know if you are still struggling with the problem, I would love to hear your experience and the route you had taken.

This is probably a biased answer but I will try to answer with my experience. Like you, we have also lost the good fight to persuade our client to use a Linux server. We have 2 metals and a small bunch of virtual machines running Windows Server 2019 - Server version 1809 (Which is not the cutting edge, but the most recent stable version) It was indeed an improvement on top of WS2016. However it still had some problems. The major problem was with the docker swarm. The overlay networking with routing mesh was not working properly. So we had to fall back to containers with docker-compose and manual service discovery, which kinda beats the purpose of docker.

That being said, the problem with the Swarm network could be because of the fact that we are using virtual machines and Hyper-v switches. On top of that, we had no direct access to host network and we had to jump through some bureaucratic hoops whenever we require changes in the network, which got super old super fast when we want to test stuff. Additionally, we did not have Active Directory because of our lack of confidence to network. I am still not sure if DCs would play with docker in a virtual environment. Still not having AD was manageable since we did not have many machines.

Another problem was that we did not have nested virtualization (i.e. cannot run moby) due to CPU issues, and WSL2 with support for Docker is not available on WS19 LTSC editions. So I had to write our own images for many stuff that we use. Like Jenkins, Redis, etc. You can find the dockerfiles here if interested But obviously keeping them up to date and tidy was a huge work and I did not have much time to invest.

Performance-wise, we seemed to have no issues but we did not really make a comparative analysis.

All in all, I love Docker, it is a great product. But after this project I am thinking not to touch Docker on windows in a production environment with a 10 foot pole. In fact, I don't know if I will ever use a Windows machine as production environment in the future. It is cool to have it in development though.

Answer 4

It's not clear if the OP is asking "Can I run Docker on Windows in production" (like from a licensing perspective), or "should I run it" (like from an experience perspective.) I have an answer that should address both points.

It's indeed interesting to note first that as I write this, all the answers and comments so far are from 2018 or (like the question) 2017.

Here's at least one 2019 post on the topic from Docker (including listing clients running in production, so it addresses both points):

https://www.docker.com/blog/5-reasons-to-containerize-production-windows-apps-on-docker-enterprise/

And while the title refers to Docker Enterprise, the article does say "Hundreds of enterprises now run Windows container nodes in production", without that Enterprise caveat.

Even so, folks who may "not want to pay to run Docker Enterprise" should note that Windows 2016 and 2019 include a license of Docker Enterprise, free. (As for the recent upheaval of Docker where the Enterprise product was sold to Mirantis, there's no indication yet that will change the included Windows licensing of it.)

Still, I realize that the OP and other readers may seek still more (documented) evidence of production Docker deployment on Windows. I'll leave that for others to elaborate. Just didn't think this should stand here without anything more recent than July 2018.

Answer 5

Check out this blog, it quotes "Windows Server 2016 is the where Docker Windows containers should be deployed for production".

Answer 6

Citing the docs:

Welcome to Docker for Windows!

Docker is a full development platform for creating containerized apps, and Docker for Windows is the best way to get started with Docker on Windows systems.

Take this literally. It's meant by the vendor as a dev tool to develop your Docker environment on Windows, not a production environment. To run it in production, they expect a Linux host.