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

Operating Redis Cache containers

With the previous example Redis Cache container is running on the host and ready to accept connections on port 6379 (from any PC). To connect to Redis Server from Windows (or Linux) we can use the Redis client command-line utility. Redis client can be installed on any Windows machine using the MSI installation available at https://github.com/MSOpenTech/redis/releases. The default install location on Windows is C:\Programfiles\Redis. The following steps should be used to connect to Redis Cache container from any Windows machine:

  1. Open a PowerShell or Windows command-line utility window.
  2. Navigate to C:\Programfiles\Redis.
  3. Run the following command by replacing the <IPAddressOrHostName> with the hostname or IP address of the container host which was used earlier to launch the container:
       \redis-cli.exe -h <IPAddressOrHostName> -p 6379
  1. The following image shows the Redis client connected to the remote Redis Server container running on Windows Server...
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