‫All right.
‫So this week one of the topics I want to share before we get to the Q and A is about Windows Docker
‫desktop and a new feature or a sort of enhancement on how Docker runs on Windows 10.
‫So if you're a Windows user and you're running Windows 10 pro or enterprise you're lucky enough to be
‫able to use Docker desktop which is basically the best way to run Docker on windows and it's a part
‫of my courses I talk about it.
‫Obviously if you have older versions of Windows you don't get to use Docker desktop but once you get
‫to that Windows 10 pro one of the things is how to run the Windows containers.
‫And we've talked about for years about Linux containers and you can run linux containers on Windows
‫right.
‫But a couple of years ago Microsoft came up with this new concept of Windows containers which was Windows
‫binaries launching inside of Windows in a container.
‫And technically what's happening in the background there is it's a Windows server kernel.
‫So when you're on Windows 10 today by default and you start up a Windows Microsoft sequel server for
‫example when you start that container it's going to spin up a small little core server or a Nanos server
‫which are different types of windows server 2016 or 2019 that essentially are very small and it launches
‫those and then launches your container in there.
‫Right now that's great because you get to get you get that full server experience right you get the
‫server kernel which is a little bit different than the windows 10 kernel.
‫You get all the IRS features and things that you would get out of a server that are different than what
‫you would get on Windows 10 however there is because this is known as hyper v isolation by the way that's
‫called hyper v isolation and the negative of that is that it takes up more resources.
‫Right.
‫You've got to spin up the whole kernel for a new operating system.
‫And ideally if you're just wanting to run a simple EMC maybe it's you know it's a dot net EMC maybe
‫is just a command line you see it's not actually an eye as Web site or anything or if you just need
‫to run some sort of background process in a container or Windows container you don't really need that
‫full VM hyper v isolation.
‫So now process isolation has finally come to Windows 10 and what this means is is when once you turn
‫on a couple of things and enable it essentially Docker desktop will let you run a Windows binary on
‫Windows 10 natively without ever having to spin up high hypervisor container.
‫So there is this is actually the PR now in case you're curious on how this all happened.
‫This is the pull request and get hub
‫and that's sort of where the action happened with the feature being enabled and quite frankly I think
‫this is ever gonna happen because out of the gate the Microsoft team was saying that they didn't really
‫want containers to run natively on Windows 10 because the server kernel was so different that they needed
‫the server kernel in order to have a similar experience no matter where you ran the container.
‫Well that story has clearly changed now.
‫So we have later late in 2018.
‫This feature was added in the latest version of Docker desktop but you can check out Stefon one of the
‫docker captains who's now actually a doctor employee one of his blog articles talks about how to start
‫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
‫frankly he does a great job of it.
‫You can just read his article and see the the Post and the example commands and get it running on your
‫machine and basically at the end of it you will have been running Windows executable and Windows containers
‫without ever having to start up a hyper v server.
‫We don't yet have the ability to run Docker desktop because I know so many.
‫Some of you were thinking this can I.
‫Does that mean now can I run Docker desktop on Windows 10 home which doesn't have hyper v.
‫That was a question we all immediately asked in the captain's chat to see whether or not we could get
‫that going right now.
‫That's still not possible.
‫Desktop needs this all hyper v running in order to install and get that working but it is possible to
‫do this process as prices lots of process isolation.
‫It's hard to say without hyper v.
‫So we're hoping we're maybe it's possible somewhere and this year maybe even that Docker desktop could
‫possibly run only for process high school isolation on Windows containers on Windows 10 home.
‫Now this this means that in that scenario if that were ever to work you still couldn't run Linux containers
‫you still couldn't run Windows containers in hyper v isolation.
‫So there's a lot of limitations here and it would really prevent you especially the fact you can't run
‫Linux containers without hyper v.
‫This would still really limit you.
‫But it's it's sort of a crack a little bit of a crack in the limitation around requiring Windows 10
‫pro in order to run Docker desktop anyway.
‫We don't know if that's ever gonna happen.
‫I mean you know these products are largely open source you know even Docker desktop though it's not
‫completely open source.
‫It depends entirely on the engine which is fully open source.
‫So we really need open source contributions there or for it to be a real big priority for the Windows
‫team.
‫And you know having experience with the target market for docker docker desktop and docker enterprise.
‫My feeling is that even though this might be possible on Windows 10 home that we won't see that anytime
‫soon if it is forever because every company every enterprise is using Windows 10 pro or better.
‫Usually enterprise licensing usually means they get Windows 10 enterprise.
‫So the Windows 10 home market is probably more of a hobbyist market.
‫And for me as a teacher I know that my students have witnessed in home at home and then they might have
‫pro at work and there probably might be using their home machine right to learn Docker.
‫So it's it's a shame because even though we're professionals we would still sometimes use home at home.
‫But I got this feeling that it's not going to be a top priority with the windows Docker desktop team
‫but we'll see.
‫Right.
‫I don't get your hopes up.
‫I don't have any insider information or anything.
‫I just know that this stuff is one complicated and it can be hard to get right.
‫And then for stuff like this it has to be a big priority to happen quickly.
‫So it's not probably something I would've guessed that the big enterprises in the world are all asking
‫for Windows 10 home compatibility.
‫So but you never know.
‫So check that out.
‫Try that let me know in the comments of course you know zooming out a tweet or if you're in the docker
‫or mastery slack let me know there if you can get this working because it's pretty great.
‫And I think it'll save you some resources and make it much faster to spin up and spin down containers
‫if you're working on Windows containers.