The future of Nano Server
The future of Nano Server is all about containers. In the next release of Windows Server and beyond, Microsoft will optimize Nano Server image for containers. The uncompressed Nano container image in Windows Server 2016 is about 1 GB in size, this includes components not relevant for containers such as components needed for physical and virtual machines. Microsoft is significantly working on reducing the size of the image on disk by 50% and even more by the time you read this. This has two benefits. Firstly, it will speed up the start-up time of containers, and secondly, will minimize the bandwidth needed when you pull the image from Docker Hub (repository). All the components not relevant for containers and modern application development will be removed from the image. The optional components will be delivered as layers. Let's say, you need to pull a Nano optimized container image, and if you want .NET Core, you need to pull .NET as a layer on top of the image...