In this chapter we covered the following points:
- VMs help create isolated environments, each with guest OS. Software applications or services can run inside a VM with complete isolation from another VM.
- Hypervisors can run discrete VMs such as Linux and Windows together.
- VMs suffer from portability and packaging due to the huge size and intense orchestration needs.
- Containerization helps run software systems as isolated processes inside a machine. Containers increase the density of applications per machine, and also provide application packaging and shipping capabilities.
- Windows Server 2016 supports containerization using kernel features such as filesystems, namespaces, and registry.
- Windows Server 2016 runs two types of containers, Windows Server Containers and Hyper-V Containers. Windows Server Containers share OS kernels, whereas Hyper-V Containers run their own OS.
- Nano Server is a deeply refactored version of Windows Server, which is 93% smaller, remotely-administered, and ideal for microservices.
- Microsoft Azure supports cluster management solutions such as DC/OS and swarm.