All right. 1
So this week one of the topics I want to share before we get to the Q and A is about Windows Docker 2
desktop and a new feature or a sort of enhancement on how Docker runs on Windows 10. 3
So if you're a Windows user and you're running Windows 10 pro or enterprise you're lucky enough to be 4
able to use Docker desktop which is basically the best way to run Docker on windows and it's a part 5
of my courses I talk about it. 6
Obviously if you have older versions of Windows you don't get to use Docker desktop but once you get 7
to that Windows 10 pro one of the things is how to run the Windows containers. 8
And we've talked about for years about Linux containers and you can run linux containers on Windows 9
right. 10
But a couple of years ago Microsoft came up with this new concept of Windows containers which was Windows 11
binaries launching inside of Windows in a container. 12
And technically what's happening in the background there is it's a Windows server kernel. 13
So when you're on Windows 10 today by default and you start up a Windows Microsoft sequel server for 14
example when you start that container it's going to spin up a small little core server or a Nanos server 15
which are different types of windows server 2016 or 2019 that essentially are very small and it launches 16
those and then launches your container in there. 17
Right now that's great because you get to get you get that full server experience right you get the 18
server kernel which is a little bit different than the windows 10 kernel. 19
You get all the IRS features and things that you would get out of a server that are different than what 20
you would get on Windows 10 however there is because this is known as hyper v isolation by the way that's 21
called hyper v isolation and the negative of that is that it takes up more resources. 22
Right. 23
You've got to spin up the whole kernel for a new operating system. 24
And ideally if you're just wanting to run a simple EMC maybe it's you know it's a dot net EMC maybe 25
is just a command line you see it's not actually an eye as Web site or anything or if you just need 26
to run some sort of background process in a container or Windows container you don't really need that 27
full VM hyper v isolation. 28
So now process isolation has finally come to Windows 10 and what this means is is when once you turn 29
on a couple of things and enable it essentially Docker desktop will let you run a Windows binary on 30
Windows 10 natively without ever having to spin up high hypervisor container. 31
So there is this is actually the PR now in case you're curious on how this all happened. 32
This is the pull request and get hub 33
and that's sort of where the action happened with the feature being enabled and quite frankly I think 34
this is ever gonna happen because out of the gate the Microsoft team was saying that they didn't really 35
want containers to run natively on Windows 10 because the server kernel was so different that they needed 36
the server kernel in order to have a similar experience no matter where you ran the container. 37
Well that story has clearly changed now. 38
So we have later late in 2018. 39
This feature was added in the latest version of Docker desktop but you can check out Stefon one of the 40
docker captains who's now actually a doctor employee one of his blog articles talks about how to start 41
this and how to set it up and it's a few steps that I'm not going to go through live here because quite 42
frankly he does a great job of it. 43
You can just read his article and see the the Post and the example commands and get it running on your 44
machine and basically at the end of it you will have been running Windows executable and Windows containers 45
without ever having to start up a hyper v server. 46
We don't yet have the ability to run Docker desktop because I know so many. 47
Some of you were thinking this can I. 48
Does that mean now can I run Docker desktop on Windows 10 home which doesn't have hyper v. 49
That was a question we all immediately asked in the captain's chat to see whether or not we could get 50
that going right now. 51
That's still not possible. 52
Desktop needs this all hyper v running in order to install and get that working but it is possible to 53
do this process as prices lots of process isolation. 54
It's hard to say without hyper v. 55
So we're hoping we're maybe it's possible somewhere and this year maybe even that Docker desktop could 56
possibly run only for process high school isolation on Windows containers on Windows 10 home. 57
Now this this means that in that scenario if that were ever to work you still couldn't run Linux containers 58
you still couldn't run Windows containers in hyper v isolation. 59
So there's a lot of limitations here and it would really prevent you especially the fact you can't run 60
Linux containers without hyper v. 61
This would still really limit you. 62
But it's it's sort of a crack a little bit of a crack in the limitation around requiring Windows 10 63
pro in order to run Docker desktop anyway. 64
We don't know if that's ever gonna happen. 65
I mean you know these products are largely open source you know even Docker desktop though it's not 66
completely open source. 67
It depends entirely on the engine which is fully open source. 68
So we really need open source contributions there or for it to be a real big priority for the Windows 69
team. 70
And you know having experience with the target market for docker docker desktop and docker enterprise. 71
My feeling is that even though this might be possible on Windows 10 home that we won't see that anytime 72
soon if it is forever because every company every enterprise is using Windows 10 pro or better. 73
Usually enterprise licensing usually means they get Windows 10 enterprise. 74
So the Windows 10 home market is probably more of a hobbyist market. 75
And for me as a teacher I know that my students have witnessed in home at home and then they might have 76
pro at work and there probably might be using their home machine right to learn Docker. 77
So it's it's a shame because even though we're professionals we would still sometimes use home at home. 78
But I got this feeling that it's not going to be a top priority with the windows Docker desktop team 79
but we'll see. 80
Right. 81
I don't get your hopes up. 82
I don't have any insider information or anything. 83
I just know that this stuff is one complicated and it can be hard to get right. 84
And then for stuff like this it has to be a big priority to happen quickly. 85
So it's not probably something I would've guessed that the big enterprises in the world are all asking 86
for Windows 10 home compatibility. 87
So but you never know. 88
So check that out. 89
Try that let me know in the comments of course you know zooming out a tweet or if you're in the docker 90
or mastery slack let me know there if you can get this working because it's pretty great. 91
And I think it'll save you some resources and make it much faster to spin up and spin down containers 92
if you're working on Windows containers.