[deadfece]

My main advice on Windows Containers is to avoid them at all costs.

A lot of the things that ran in Windows Nano Server worked even better in Linux containers, and a full Windows Server Core container is usually only necessary for .NET Framework, where you will need all of the luck in the world help you with that problem.

Packer and Ansible are also much harder to use for Windows Containers, so if you're already using those to configure VM images and Ansible to perform config mgmt on VMs, get ready for some headaches to make that work against Windows Containers.

[stackskipton]

Former Windows Container wrangler. First off, why are you using Ansible/Packer against Windows Container images? You wouldn't fault Linux Containers for being terrible to use with Packer/Ansible because you shouldn't be doing that.

Second, Yea, it's only use is Windows specific languages like .Net Framework and various Win32 API applications. Windows Containers works well enough if you are good enough with Powershell to handle various levels of bullshit that comes Windows.

[deadfece]

> First off, why are you using Ansible/Packer against Windows Container images ? You wouldn't fault Linux Containers for being terrible to use with Packer/Ansible because you shouldn't be doing that.

You can build Linux containers just fine with Packer/Ansible. But to your point I already stated why I use Ansible and Packer for container images: "if you're already using those to configure VM images and Ansible to perform config mgmt on VMs"

I currently build a number of images with Packer and Ansible across Linux and Windows. I choose not to rewrite all of that from scratch in a crummy Dockerfile when I can just have Packer and Ansible make the images alongside everything else they're already making.