I was speculating the other day that some sort of container-based virtualisation might be a feature of the server part of Windows 'Threshold'.
I'm sure Hyper-V does some sharing of memory pages related to the Windows kernel when running multiple Windows VMs (if they are the same version at least), but there's probably an opportunity for an approach that is lighterweight than VMs but still gives you a greater degree of isolation than just a managed boundary via the CLR.
I was vaguely aware that there was something in this space already... I think it used be known as Virtozzo? Anyway, I wonder how well it can work as a layer on top of the Windows OS rather than being integrated as I imagine only MS could do.
There has been an initiative inside of MSFT called project drawbridge which has in place for 4 years to do this. They have given up on it...the problem is isolation and there is not clean way to isolate registry. Azure was an attempt to do this and it ended up being super restrictive for any real world apps.
Yes, I'd love to, but what's the right place to start? I'm thinking Windows would need kernel modifications to make something like docker even possible on the platform.
We building a more pluggable Docker for 1.0. The execution engine and a bunch of the components will be pluggable via API. You can then pop in an execution engine that runs on Windows and get the benefits of Docker.
> I'm thinking Windows would need kernel modifications to make something like docker even possible on the platform
If this is the case, then are we basically SOL with regard to docker on Windows? Unless Microsoft take it upon themselves to make that compatibility happen.
There is existing software such as Parallels, Sandboxie, or iCore Virtual Accounts which do something like container virtualization on Windows, so it should be possible. I'm not really sure how they operate under the hood however.
I'm sure Hyper-V does some sharing of memory pages related to the Windows kernel when running multiple Windows VMs (if they are the same version at least), but there's probably an opportunity for an approach that is lighterweight than VMs but still gives you a greater degree of isolation than just a managed boundary via the CLR.