https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-instances/container-instances-multi-container-group
Below is a quote from the above URL.
Is there a technical reason that windows is not supported?
Or will it eventually be supported? If yes, any idea when windows will be supported?
Multi-container groups are currently restricted to Linux containers. While we are working to bring all features to Windows containers, you can find current platform differences in Quotas and region availability for Azure Container Instances.
Multi-container group is currently restricted to Linux containers because network namespace is not available on Windows. Maybe it would be supported for windows in future.
You can get more details following this link.
Product team from ACI here - docs are correct that Windows containers do not support multi-container groups yet. We will update the documentation to be clearer about that.
We do plan to support multi-container groups for Windows though, currently estimated for support in late 2018 / early 2019. Stay tuned to Azure updates for the latest.
Related
In order to avoid doing some overhead work, I decide to use a work-around to upgrade my VM from server 2016 to 2019. The work around was successful and everything is running fine. One hiccup though is that I still see the plan being set to "2016-Datacenter".
(Correct me if I am wrong) So far doing some digging I see that this is set at the create time of the VM; it corresponds to the sku of the image used to build the VM.
My question is, are there any gotchas if the VM is running server 2019 but the plan is set to "2016-Datacenter"
Plan information is metadata Microsoft uses to track Marketplace offers. If you want to create an image in a shared gallery, using a source that was originally created from an Azure Marketplace image like this, you may need to keep track of purchase plan information. You may face issues when you create a VM from the Azure Marketplace image if there is wrong plan information. Read here for more details.
We are able to do an Azure VM in-place upgrade to Windows Server 2019. Here is the step by step process to update the IaaS VM Windows server to Windows Server 2019 for your reference.
However, it's not recommended to do because Microsoft does not support an upgrade of the operating system of an Azure VM.. It prefers to use a clean uninstallation and installation. To work around this issue, create an Azure VM that's running a supported version of an operating system, and then migrate the workload.
I understand that both Azure Service Fabric and Azure Container Services can be used to host microservices through containers.
In what scenarios is it practical & cost effective to use one over the other? What are some strong use cases for Azure Service Fabric and Azure Container Services models of hosting
I read this comparison but did not find it comprehensive
Update: A comparison table like one in this diagram would help keep the points "sticky" & memorable while deciding which option to use
Acronyms used in the table - AF - Azure Functions, ASF - Azure Service Fabric, ASE - App Service Environment, ACS - Azure Container Service, VMSS - Virtual Machine Scale Set
The “rank” should not be misconstrued as good or bad
Beside the link you pasted for "Choosing between Azure Container Service, Azure Service Fabric and Azure Functions" - Following is what I have found out.
Azure Service Fabric (ASF) is more of a PaaS offering while Azure Container Service (ACS) is more like an IaaS offering.
ASF gives you its own specific programming model, which if you follow then you will be able to take advantage of ASF features. That is why there is an ASF SDK for C#/Java you need to use. However ASF additionally allows guest executables and orchestrating Docker containers (not sure how much will they be leveraged compared to ACS or will they be at par).
At the moment ASF is Windows only (ASF on Linux preview now available # Feb 2017) (it smells vendor tie-in)
ASF offers you Actor model which is good for IoT solution (maybe quicker to implement than to DIY on ACS)
ACS in this sense is more open; it provides only container based model and heavily relies and support docker ecosystem. And once its a container its pretty much technology agnostic.
This could also be the reason for Microsoft's push for Windows Nano which is a basis for the windows based (server level) containers (my opinion). So with ACS you can either have Windows or Linux containers or both.
ACS also allows you to use the open source, industry famous container orchestrators including Docker Swarm, DC/OS-Mesos.
While ASF provides sort of its own orchestration. In other words ASF provides more integrated, easier to use feature rich model but ACS gives you much more openness and flexibility.
MS guys in some conference also mentioned that it could be considered that ASF is more of a Microsoft oriented shop while ACS is more oriented towards open source technologies.
[Feb 2019 Update]
It's a difficult comparison as Azure Service Fabric also exposes an application framework. It's pretty opinionated about the way applications should be built, which doesn't necessarily fit well with notions of 12-factor, cloud-native container apps.
This is an ever-moving feast, but there are a growing number of container runtimes in Azure:
Azure Kubernetes Service is the container orchestrator that replaced
ACS. It seems to be moving very much in a PaaS direction.
Azure Container Instances are useful for small jobs and burst scale
Azure Batch is optimised for large, repetitive compute jobs
Azure Service Fabric is an IaaS offering geared more around lifting and shifting Windows applications to the cloud
Azure Service Fabric Mesh is the new kid on the block - a PaaS service for Service Fabric apps.
All in all, if you're starting with containers then I would give Service Fabric a miss and head for Kubernetes. You can run containers in Service Fabric, but you can be made to feel like a second-class citizen. IMHO, OFC.
Gross over simplification. If your a Linux guy ACS will probably match what you want better. If you are a Windows dev writing windows code ASF will probably serve you better.
This is a question for Azure experts, in particular around the Windows VM's available in Azure.
Do they make any changes to the base build? Hardening and security standards? Or are they standard builds fresh out the box?
Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.
yes. Public and up-to-date information about security measures like compliance, some technical details, etc, can be found on the Azure Trust Center.
However, i do not think that Microsoft reveals all of the internal implementation information, but a lot of work is doing around isolation of hypervisor, root os, guest vms. Also, there is the Azure Fabric Controller is the "brain" that secures and isolates customer deployments and manage the commands sent to Host OS/Hypervisor, and the Host OS is a configuration-hardened version of Windows Server.
Some basic information can be found here:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud/gg663906.aspx
Azure Fabric Controller: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/videos/fabric-controller-internals-building-and-updating-high-availability-apps/
And i recommend to follow Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO, as his video are one of the most internal-details-revealing i ever saw.
You might wanna check out the CIS hardened Images in the Azure Marketplace: https://www.cisecurity.org/cis-hardened-images-now-in-microsoft-azure-marketplace/
Ther you can choose between two levels of hardening, depending on your workload as well as there multiple Windows Server versiosn and even some Linuxs distrubutions. If you want to harden the VMs yourself, I would check out the Dev-Sec Project on github: https://github.com/dev-sec
There you can customize the hardening to your needs if you have an automation tool in place like chef, puppet etc.
I am trying to figuring out how to create virtual machines with windows azure php sdk https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-php , I can't seem to understand on how to do this as there is any mention about virtual machines in the sdk.
Any help will be very apreciated.
Thanks
The Azure-SDK-for-PHP offers Service Management (see https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-php/blob/master/README.md) to spin up app services or VM’s. I’m not sure if it already includes support for managing Docker containers, but since it’s all REST API in the background, it should not take too much time to write a few lines to have it do the same thing. But for VM’s you can definitely manage them through the SDK.
If you need code samples, ping me. I’d love to share my knowledge.
I think azure-php-sdk is for using azure storage etc. it's not for creating VM.
Normally to create VM throught management portal and Windows azure powershell.
I want to develop an application using appfabric composite application/model but i was unable to find any latest updates on it. Also very little help related to it is present on web thus creating a confusion that whether this feature is continued after June CTP 2011 or not ?
Is there any update going to be available in future release?
Also I have installed windows azure toolkit 1.7 and after that azure appfabric sdk1.5 but in visual studio project templates I cannot find any template for appfabric as shown in some videos.
What additional installables will I require ?
In Windows Azure, word "App Fabric" is not longer used, instead all the services which were part of "Windows Azure App Fabric *" are named completely different (Service bus, ACS, Cache * etc) specific to their objective. That why you do not see any latest documentation specific to "App Fabric" in Windows Azure. Now when App Fabric term is used specific to Windows Server specific service model.
That's another reason when you installed Windows Azure SDK 1.7 you did not see any thing specific to App Fabric at all.
I am not sure how much it will apply but you sure can take a look at "Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure - eBook" and see if that will help you.