In recent years, Microsoft’s active interest in Containers on Windows 10 and Azure has meant customers now have a true choice. Of course, Microsoft also allows Linux virtual machines to run in Azure these days. In other words, many customers are managing containers across both Linux and Windows. However, this is a frustrating experience because there is no service that units those systems and allows users to manage containers from both platforms under one interface. Red Hate has announced OpenShift Kubernetes to allow the running and management of containers on Linux and Windows.
Coming Soon
This ability is part of the new Red Hat OpenShift 4.6 release. It taps into the Windows Machine Config Operator (WMCO), which is based on the Kubernetes Operate Framework. This is an officially certified operator between Microsoft and Red Hat. By baking WMCO into OpenShift, Red Hat is allowing users to manage Windows containers on the main console. It’s worth pointing out customers could already manage and run Linux containers. In a blog post, Red Hat OpenShift highlights some of the following abilities of this new feature:
“Move Windows containers to Red Hat OpenShift without needing to completely re-architect or write new code. Lower deployment costs for containerized workloads in heterogeneous IT environments. Improve productivity and DevOps agility by providing cloud-native management through a single platform. Greater portability and survivability of applications across hybrid cloud environments, including new public cloud deployments or edge installations.”
It is worth noting the new version of OpenShift is not yet rolling out with Windows Containers support. Instead, Red Hat says it will be available in the coming weeks. Tip of the day: Did you know that Windows 10´s Task Manager lets you set CPU affinity to claw back some resources from running apps and give selected apps higher priority. Our tutorial shows how you can use this helpful feature.