Q. What are some key actions to perform when first using Containers on Windows Server 2016?
A. Once you have installed a container host you likely want to actually create a container. By default an install of Containers configures a NAT network which enables containers created to be accessible from the network using the IP address of the container host.
The first step is to download a container OS image. Normally you will want the NanoServer image and the ServerCore image. These can be downloaded as follows:
- Open up an elevated command prompt
- Run the commands:
docker images (currently no images)
docker pull microsoft/windowsservercore
docker pull nanoserver/iis
docker images (now have images) - You can now create a container instance running Server Core that you can interact with:
docker run -it microsoft/windowsservercore cmd.exe
<run commands>
exit (when finished) - The container still exists but has existed (since its task, cmd.exe has completed)
docker ps -a - To delete the container run
docker rm <ID of the container instance>
For example:
C:\Windows\system32>docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
87604fa30100 microsoft/windowsservercore "cmd.exe" 9 seconds ago Exited (0) 2 seconds ago infallible_bartik
C:\Windows\system32>docker rm 87604fa30100
87604fa30100
C:\Windows\system32>docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
While you could create a custom image with IIS, for example, you can search the repository for an existing image:
docker search iis
docker pull microsoft/iis
You can now create container instances based on the IIS and customize but that is more advanced. For now you have used a container!