This post by David Papkin is about Microsoft revamp of Nano in Fall Release feature update 1709.
microsoft to shrink-nano to focus on containers by David Papkin
Coming with this September’s feature update to Windows Server 2016 — Windows Server 1709 — Microsoft is tweaking what Nano Server is and what it will be optimized to do and not do.
Starting with the coming feature update (1709), according to Microsoft, “Nano Server will be available only as a container base OS image. You must run it as a container in a container host, such as a Server Core installation of the next release of Windows Server.”
Moving forward, says Microsoft in its documentation:
- Nano Server has been optimized for .NET Core applications.
- Nano Server is even smaller than the Windows Server 2016 version. Windows PowerShell, .NET Core, and WMI are no longer included by default, but you can include PowerShell and .NET Core container packages when building your container.
- There is no longer a servicing stack included in Nano Server.
- Microsoft publishes an updated Nano container to Docker Hub that you redeploy.
- You troubleshoot the new Nano Container by using Docker.
- You can now run Nano containers on IoT Core.
Starting with the coming feature update (1709), according to Microsoft, “Nano Server will be available only as a container base OS image. You must run it as a container in a container host, such as a Server Core installation of the next release of Windows Server.”
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-nano-server-what-to-expect-this-fall/
The revamp of Nano Server is noteworthy because leading up to its release last year, Microsoft had touted the minimal-footprint deployment option for Windows Server 2016 for its suitability for large clusters in Web-scale application and datacenter environments. However, Microsoft has since found that the “vast-majority” of Nano Server deployments from a workload perspective are running container-based applications based on Docker, Kubernetes and others. Since container-based workloads do not require the infrastructure components, Microsoft determined that removing them would result in a more efficient server environment and advance the move toward containers.
“Nano Server will be optimized as a container runtime image and we will deprecate the infrastructure roles,” said Chris Van Wesep, Microsoft’s director of enterprise cloud product marketing, “so for anybody who had wanted to do smaller footprint compute and storage clusters, Server Core will be the right implementation to do that.” By deprecating the infrastructure features in the Nano Server option, the removal of that code will make way for Microsoft’s new .NET Core 2.0, “which enables customers to use more of their code in more places [and] make Nano Server the best option for new container-based development,” said Erin Chapple, general manager for Windows Server, in a blog post announcing the new release options.
Microsoft is recommending Server Core for hosting virtual machines as well as containers, which Chapple said can run a Nano Server or Linux container images. The Windows Server update this fall will support Linux workloads via extended Hyper-V isolation, which will allow Linux containers to run without having to deploy two separate container infrastructures to run both Linux and Windows-based applications. As previously announced, Microsoft is also bringing the Windows Subsystem for Linux, (a.k.a. Windows Bash component), allowing application administrators and developers to use common scripts and container images for both Linux and Windows Server container hosts, according to Chapple.
Rest of the Redomd Magazine article may be found at the link below.
This concludes this post by David Papkin about the Microsoft revamp of Nano in Fall Release feature update 1709.
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