Demystifying Docker Containers Support on Windows 10 and Windows Server 1709

Both my colleague Kendall Roden and myself were recently taking a deep dive into docker containers support on Windows 10 and Windows Server 1709. We knew that we could install “Docker Desktop” to add support for Docker, but as we dug deeper we found out that there is more to it than simply installing “Docker Desktop”. Basically the experience on Windows 10 was tailored towards developers whereas the experience on Windows Server 1709 was tailored towards production. This had several implications ranging from the tools that can be used all the way to the capabilities available on each platform. This blog post is our attempt to demystify the differences in the experience on both platforms and along the way uncover some of the driving technologies on Windows 10 and Windows Server 1709 that makes docker support even possible in the first place.

It’s no secret by now that “Docker Desktop” is the go to tool for adding support for docker containers on Windows 10. Once you install the tool you will notice you get two key components which allow you to run both Linux based containers as well as Windows based containers. The first piece is a Linux Hyper-V VM (called MobyLinuxVM) which gets created automatically after installing “Docker Desktop” tool. This is required since containers share a kernel with the container host, thus running Linux containers directly on Windows isn’t an option. As for Windows containers they do not require a VM as the kernel of the host OS (Windows 10 or Windows…