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.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Summary


Microsoft offers a code repository, build and release environment in a single suite called Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) which is also part of the Microsoft Azure subscription. VSTS can be used for work item management, source and version control, automated builds, continuous integration, delivery and reporting. A similar setup can be achieved for a private cloud using TFS 2015. Windows Containers can be built and publishing using a continuous integration and deployment pipeline built using VSTS. Docker extension for VSTS uses Linux machines to build and create images which cannot be used to build Windows Container images. As of today, we should create a Windows agent using Windows Server 2016 to build and publish Docker images. Configuring CI and CD enables faster releases and tested builds using automation. Continuous release to the development or staging environments for every code checked in ensures that the application is regularly tested and that all the stakeholders are...