Microsoft exec builds an app with Docker for both Windows Server and Linux

Microsoft is making its widely used software even more capable of working with the trendy open-source Docker container technology. During a presentation at DockerCon in San Francisco today, Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of the Microsoft Azure public cloud, used Docker to deploy an application on both the Windows Server and Linux operating systems.

The front end was written in Asp.net, the middle tier in Node.js, and the back-end on top of MongoDB, Russinovich said.

It was “kind of ironic,” he said, but he pushed the Asp.net code to a Linux container, and he pushed the Node code to a container running Windows Server Technical Preview 2.

Docker and Microsoft have been working together on several initiatives, including bringing Docker container support to Windows Server. But this is “the first ever multiplatform container application,” Corey Sanders, partner director of program management at Microsoft, pointed out in a blog post today.

The work comes two months after Russinovich took the stage at Microsoft’s Build developer conference and packaged up an Asp.net application into a Docker container and deployed it on a virtual machine with Windows Server.

In addition to showcasing the new cross-platform container capabilities, today Russinovich also set up a continuous-integration system for testing and running containers with the open-source Docker Compose software — right from within Visual Studio Online.

“For enterprises, Visual Studio Online also provides build tasks to deploy to a Docker Trusted Registry to provide a private repository of Docker images,” Sanders wrote in his blog post.

Beyond that, the Azure Marketplace now features a Docker Trusted Registry virtual machine image, and the Azure Marketplace now allows people to deploy container-based applications from Docker Hub images right onto Azure. Russinovich even showed how you could deploy multicontainer applications, like one featuring both WordPress and MySQL.

And there’s more to come.

“When we release Docker containers, Docker Swarm, and Docker Compose support on Windows Server, we will bring together customers and community to offer the most complete container experience, spanning tooling, operating system, and cloud platform, all so you can deploy cross-platform applications simply and easily,” Sanders wrote.

Russinovich even said, “We imagine a world of HoloLens with containers.” Whoa.

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