Windows hosts with kubernetes the beginning

Well, it wasn’t even close.  As mentioned in my previous post, I am moving to a less hands on role, and I want to keep close to the technology.  The concept of running Windows container hosts in a Kubernetes cluster fascinates me and it appears that I wasn’t alone.  With 82% of the votes on my Twitter poll, it was the clear winner.  Now I guess I actually need to start diving in, and by diving in, I mean reading docs.

Based on what I have read so far, I plan to use Tectonic to deploy Kubernetes to Azure using Terraform.  If I’m using Microsoft, might as well go whole hog right?  The master nodes need to be Linux and running Kubernetes version 1.5 to support the Windows Containers.  I will also need Windows Servers running Server 2016 RTM or newer with support for the Hyper-V and Containers roles.  Microsoft recently announced support for nested virtualization within Azure for certain Azure VM families.  That will give me the Windows container hosts I need.

My plan is to first build the Kubernetes cluster.  I want to use Terraform because:

1. I am quite familiar with Terraform, which makes that part of things a bit easier
2. I can build out the rest of the deployment in Terraform once I figure out exactly how it all works

At the end of the project, I want to have a Terraform configuration that can deploy a full Kubernetes cluster and the Windows container hosts in Azure.  My first attempts at adding a Windows container host will be manual though, and once I have a good grasp on what needs to happen, I can automate with Terraform and maybe DSC.

Once I actually have the Windows container hosts, I am going to need to find a good service to deploy.  I am open to suggestions of any Windows based container service examples that exist out there.  It doesn’thave to be super flashy, and I can figure out the service and pod configuration aspects of it.  I just need a starting point.  So if you already have a docker swarm service for Windows containers that you think would work for this project, please comment below or DM me on Twitter.

For now, I am off to read some exciting technical documentation!