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Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

azure.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#141

Post by sudioStudio64 »

merb wrote: post #139
emodendroket wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a personal blog, not some official Microsoft thing. I think that, regardless of the source, it's an important point -- at a really big environment it's hard to introduce new software packages for nontechnical reasons (like the licensing stuff) and for technical ones too (gazillions of machines with different configurations you have to worry about breaking). I've been a system administrator at a small place and…

wow. in which world do you live? since puppet, its really easy to update fleets of machines. and the tools even emerged. new software could be upgraded easily, as long you have a valid license or if it is handled by a "free" license.

not everyone is in a place where they can use puppet or a similar orchestration system. Lot's of places are actually really scared of automation because they did it in the past and someone left without documenting something that caused some mayhem. I know, things like that can be avoided. And yes, all of the places that are gaining the benefits of scale are using lot's of automation...not everywhere is like that.

Things are better than they used to be, yes. But in lots of big businesses you wouldn't believe how slow processes are for all kinds of very valid sounding reasons. Don't get me wrong...its something that I'm personally working on changing everywhere that I can. I think everyone should be able to code, system admins should ALL be able to code in at least one language.

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#142

Post by stormbrew »

emodendroket wrote: post #70
stormbrew wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not an extremely functional product. It was largely there to get government contracts where one of the requirements was POSIX conformance, even if they weren't using it.

Imagining they had first-class support for it (a major undertaking, I'd guess, but anyway) how many people would use it? I'd guess it'd be about the same people who use Cygwin now.

Why would you guess that? Because cygwin is nothing close to first class support. It has a lot of friction associated with its use. You're better off just running linux in a vm if you want posix on windows, and trust me plenty of people do that these days.

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#143

Post by kern_dude »

I have a question: if I run a bunch of usermode processes on a hyper-v container and they make system calls to interact with the kernel, will the kernel they will be interacting with be running within the container? I.e. does each Hyper-V container run a distinct Windows kernel for each contained workload? Or is there just one single and common kernel on the host and mechanisms like EPT and other virtualization hardware extensions are used to isolate user mode only?

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#144

Post by binarycrusader »

rsync wrote: post #124
binarycrusader wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone refers to jails, but I think most people would agree that jails weren't really containers. They didn't provide true isolation for a set of applications. I guess you could argue they were the original prototype for them though. Solaris containers are the first "lightweight virtualization" technology that I'm personally aware of that provided true isolation of one more processes from the host operating sy…

"Yes, everyone refers to jails, but I think most people would agree that jails weren't really containers. They didn't provide true isolation for a set of applications. I guess you could argue they were the original prototype for them though." The first VPS provider (JohnCompanies, 2001) was based entirely on jail and it absolutely provided (even then) true isolation for a set of applications. Every customer had their…

If you're talking about chroot jails, no, it was possible to "escape" jails they did not provide true isolation.

If you're talking about some other jail, possibly, but my understanding is they didn't actually provide true isolation. Certainly not a kernel-level of abstraction.

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#145

Post by shykes »

bboreham wrote: post #132
CoreySanders wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on, Solomon. Here were some of the details on Azure and Windows Server support for Swarm and Compose (and Machine): http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/02/26/sunny-and-swarmy-...

Am I confusing something? That looks like Linux guest support on a Windows Server host, which is rather different to the Windows Container topic of this thread.

I think that the goal was to show that Microsoft already supports the Docker orchestration stack with its current products - and in doing so is laying the groundwork for integrating future Windows containers into that same stack.

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#146

Post by fanf2 »

CoreySanders wrote: post #49
Guvante wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they may be putting the container in a Hyper-V VM while allowing it callbacks to the underlying OS. Done correctly this allows the hardware level protections to apply to the code running in the container, assuming the penalty of your OS calls routing through the VM-bridge doesn't kill your performance.

This is pretty close, but there is not actually a VM in the Hyper-V Container. The key thing is, these containers will take advantage of Hyper-V enforced isolation and virtualization but without requiring the full VM. So, while it has this increased isolation, it is still a container, with what you would expect from a container, including better density, faster start-up times, and portability. And will have Docker pl…

Sounds like Mirage OS / exokernels / unikernels, where the app is compiled to run directly on the VM talking to paravirtualized APIs.

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#147

Post by walterbell »

CoreySanders wrote: post #49
Guvante wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they may be putting the container in a Hyper-V VM while allowing it callbacks to the underlying OS. Done correctly this allows the hardware level protections to apply to the code running in the container, assuming the penalty of your OS calls routing through the VM-bridge doesn't kill your performance.

This is pretty close, but there is not actually a VM in the Hyper-V Container. The key thing is, these containers will take advantage of Hyper-V enforced isolation and virtualization but without requiring the full VM. So, while it has this increased isolation, it is still a container, with what you would expect from a container, including better density, faster start-up times, and portability. And will have Docker pl…

Is there an architecture diagram that shows the boundary between VMM, OS, container and storage layers?

Re: Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers

#148

Post by alttab »

merb wrote: post #139
emodendroket wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a personal blog, not some official Microsoft thing. I think that, regardless of the source, it's an important point -- at a really big environment it's hard to introduce new software packages for nontechnical reasons (like the licensing stuff) and for technical ones too (gazillions of machines with different configurations you have to worry about breaking). I've been a system administrator at a small place and…

wow. in which world do you live? since puppet, its really easy to update fleets of machines. and the tools even emerged. new software could be upgraded easily, as long you have a valid license or if it is handled by a "free" license.

In 3 years Microsoft will deliver MS Virtual Deployment Technology that uses powershell and ftp under the hood, but the integration with Visual Studio will be swooned for by millions. I'm speculating of course, but it feels like familiar territory. It always sounds like stockholm syndrome...
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