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Ask HN: Is Windows Server 2019 Serving Linux Containers Ready for Production?

9 points by portoal ↗ HN
Windows Server 2019 Serving Windows Containers looks ready for Production,

but serving Linux Containers ? (through HyperV)

Our company only want Windows OS for Prod (not linux)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick-start/set-up-environment?tabs=Windows-Server

15 comments

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core-questions
> Our company only want Windows OS for Prod (not linux)

This is a very strange decision. You pay a licensing cost to use Windows; the purpose of this is to be able to use Windows software and development tools. It's not going to be in any way better than using Linux directly if the goal is to host Linux containers.

I would heavily question this, if I was in an environment where my employment was safe to do so.

Otherwise - who gives a shit if it's "ready for production"? The decision has been made. Spend your employer's money and if they have made a bad choice (and they have), it's on them.

nwmcsween
But then some poor soul is hired x years down the road and gets to deal with the frankenstein mishmash. For example I wouldnt use samba as an AD simply due to the fact AD admins are generally going to know Windows systems and there are is loads of documentation, how-to's, etc for windows AD, the same argument can be applied to containers on Linux.
robbyt
Fear-driven boomer bosses thinking that Windows is easier than Linux, and that workers who know Windows are more fungible.

The reality is that a relative few people outside of Microsoft are actually experts, and that running Windows in large scale production is considerably more difficult than Linux.

speedgoose
If your company only wants windows for production, why would Linux containers be approved? Is it a tentative to circumvent the rule?
throwawayboise
I could imagine it is. If the company policy is "everything must run on Windows servers" well then you can argue that your linux container is running "on Windows"
portoal
Exactly the line of thinking...the linux containers are just "applications"
portoal
Linux containers have been created to deploy onto Azure. Currently looking what options we have to deploy on-premise, preferably we could just deploy Linux containers.

Azure Stack Hub is the perfect choice here, but we haven't started down this path yet.

staticautomatic
I’m in this same spot right now doing government contracting with only Windows server approved. On top of that open source software is only allowed if it’s “supported”. Between Anaconda Commercial and Windows, the universe of tooling is crazy small. All kinds of thing I’m used to are in this “runs on windows but isn’t officially supported and not a great choice for production” purgatory. I’m running flask through CGI on IIS. RQ/Dramatiq/Celery -> SQL Server + sqlalchemy + APScheduler. Its...annoying. At least I have Pandas.
portoal
Wow...interesting and understandable in Enterprise land, where support is mandatory
SBArbeit
Well, Microsoft Azure is one huge, global system, the second-largest cloud on Planet Earth, with millions of servers, almost all of which run Windows Server 2019 as the host OS, with even more millions of VM's running on top, millions of which are Linux.

So, uh, yes, it's ready for production.

robbyt
All of this technology being propped up by massive teams of engineers who literally wrote that frankenstein OS. It might work great for MS, but that doesn't mean it will work well for normal people.
getcrunk
Hyper v works to serve Linux vms. You should always test your particular use case before committing. They have trial licenses.
portoal
Yup, but after pondering it, makes NO technical sense to do it..we'll test and see.
getcrunk
Hey I hate windows. To me It makes no "technical" sense to deploy anything Microsoft makes.

There's other reasons it makes sense lol (practical, ease of use, startup cost)

Spooky23
A place I worked at a few years ago tried running HyperV for some use cases where it had licensing benefits. ~5000 VMs out of about 50000, mostly on VMWare.

At the time, the MS tooling was garbage, and we had a lot of operational networking issues. I would pay close attention to the tooling and the ops team capabilities.

If you need to use windows in prod, use Windows. Trying to get past a policy constraint with a hack like that ultimately isn’t a good idea for a variety of reasons. It’s not saving you money if the business breaks.