Book Image

Learning Windows Server Containers

Book Image

Learning Windows Server Containers

Overview of this book

Windows Server Containers are independent, isolated, manageable and portable application environments which are light weight and shippable. Decomposing your application into smaller manageable components or MicroServices helps in building scalable and distributed application environments. Windows Server Containers have a significant impact on application developers, development operations (DevOps) and infrastructure management teams. Applications can be built, shipped and deployed in a fast-paced manner on an easily manageable and updatable environment. Learning Windows Server Containers teaches you to build simple to advanced production grade container based application using Asp.Net Core, Visual Studio, Azure, Docker and PowerShell technologies. The book teaches you to build and deploy simple web applications as Windows and Hyper-V containers on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 on Azure. You will learn to build on top of Windows Container Base OS Images, integrate with existing images from Docker Hub, create custom images and publish to Hub. You will also learn to work with storage containers built using Volumes and SQL Server as container, create and configure custom networks, integrate with Redis Cache containers, configure continuous integration and deployment pipelines using VSTS and Git Repository. Further you can also learn to manage resources for a container, setting up monitoring and diagnostics, deploy composite container environments using Docker Compose on Windows and manage container clusters using Docker Swarm. The last chapter of the book focuses on building applications using Microsoft’s new and thinnest server platform – Nano Servers.

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Exploring Virtualization
Exploring Virtualization
Microsoft's history of virtualization
Understanding virtualization levels
Limitations of virtualization
Introduction to containerization
Introduction to Windows Server Containers
Hyper-V Containers
Windows Server Containers on Azure
Comparing containerization and VM virtualization
Cluster management
Tooling support
Who else is working with containers?
Summary
2
Deploying First Container
Deploying First Container
Preparing the development environment
Windows Server Containers development
Running web application in Docker
Summary
3
Working with Container Images
Working with Container Images
Listing images
Searching images
docker pull
docker run
docker build
Docker tags
docker commit
docker exec
docker push
Cleaning up containers or images
Summary
4
Developing Container Applications
Developing Container Applications
Setting up the development environment
Understanding .NET Core and ASP.NET Core
Developing an ASP.NET Core application
Developing ASP.NET 4.5 applications as Windows Server Containers
Windows Server Container networking
Summary
5
Deploying Container Applications
Deploying Container Applications
Deploy Azure VMs using ARM
Configure VM for remote connectivity
Configuring remote Docker host
Deploying containers remotely
Configuring load balancer
Deploy Hyper-V Containers
Dangling images
Summary
6
Storage Volumes
Storage Volumes
Storage volumes
Relational databases and SQL Server container
Music Store—store data using SQL Server container
Summary
7
Redis Cache Containers
Redis Cache Containers
Creating Redis Cache container
Operating Redis Cache containers
Persistent Redis containers
Master-slave configuration
Integrating Redis containers with Music Store
Summary
8
Container Network
Container Network
Introduction to Windows networking
Configuring container networks
Networking modes
Multiple container networks
Container network routing
Multi-subnet deployment of Music Store
Managing Docker networks using Windows PowerShell for Docker
Summary
9
Continuous Integration and Delivery
Continuous Integration and Delivery
Introduction to Visual Studio Team Services 
Continuous integration
Continuous delivery
Testing CI/CD
Summary
10
Manage Resource Allocation and REST API
Manage Resource Allocation and REST API
Container resource allocation
Insights and telemetry
Optimizing Dockerfiles
Docker REST API
Docker .NET SDK
Summary
11
Composite Containers and Clustering
Composite Containers and Clustering
Orchestrating multi-container deployment using docker-compose
A docker-compose file reference
Docker CLI options
Docker Swarm architecture
Setting up a swarm cluster
Docker Swarm features
Summary
12
Nano Server
Nano Server
A brief introduction to Nano Server
Benefits of running workloads on Nano Server
Provisioning Nano Server on Azure
Provisioning Nano Server on Windows 10
Package management
Deploy .NET Core applications on Nano Server
Configuration management using PowerShell DSC
Nano containers
Summary

Docker Swarm features

Docker Swarm is not the only cluster management tool available in the market; there are few more famous ones like Kubernetes, Mesos and DC/OS. There is an inclination towards swarm given its nativity, seamless integration capabilities with the docker engine and standard Docker API.

The following are few salient features of Docker Swarm which makes it more prominent among the other cluster management tools.

  • The existing Docker CLI can be used to setup Docker Swarm or Docker Engines to deploy applications, this eliminates the need to learn a new tool or language to manager group of Docker nodes.
  • Nodes in a Docker Swarm are not specialized which means any node can perform the role of Manager or Worker because they all use the same Docker Engine.
  • Docker Swarm also has inbuilt resiliency, if you desire to have 10 replicas of a container the manager always checks for the desired state. The manager will create new containers instantly in the event of any crash. The same applies...
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