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Kubernetes v1.14 delivers production-level support for Windows nodes and Windows containers

Authors: Michael Michael (VMware), Patrick Lang (Microsoft)

The first release of Kubernetes in 2019 brings a highly anticipated feature - production-level support for Windows workloads. Up until now Windows node support in Kubernetes has been in beta, allowing many users to experiment and see the value of Kubernetes for Windows containers. While in beta, developers in the Kubernetes community and Windows Server team worked together to improve the container runtime, build a continuous testing process, and complete features needed for a good user experience. Kubernetes now officially supports adding Windows nodes as worker nodes and scheduling Windows containers, enabling a vast ecosystem of Windows applications to leverage the power of our platform.

As Windows developers and devops engineers have been adopting containers over the last few years, they've been looking for a way to manage all their workloads with a common interface. Kubernetes has taken the lead for container orchestration, and this gives users a consistent way to manage their container workloads whether they need to run on Linux or Windows.

The journey to a stable release of Windows in Kubernetes was not a walk in the park. The community has been working on Windows support for 3 years, delivering an alpha release with v1.5, a beta with v1.9, and now a stable release with v1.14. We would not be here today without rallying broad support and getting significant contributions from companies including Microsoft, Docker, VMware, Pivotal, Cloudbase Solutions, Google and Apprenda. During this journey, there were 3 critical points in time that significantly advanced our progress.

  1. Advancements in Windows Server container networking that provided the infrastructure to create CNI (Container Network Interface) plugins
  2. Enhancements shipped in Windows Server semi-annual channel releases enabled Kubernetes development to move forward - culminating with Windows Server 2019 on the Long-Term Servicing Channel. This is the best release of Windows Server for running containers.
  3. The adoption of the KEP (Kubernetes Enhancement Proposals) process. The Windows KEP outlined a clear and agreed upon set of goals, expectations, and deliverables based on review and feedback from stakeholders across multiple SIGs. This created a clear plan that SIG-Windows could follow, paving the path towards this stable release.

With v1.14, we're declaring that Windows node support is stable, well-tested, and ready for adoption in production scenarios. This is a huge milestone for many reasons. For Kubernetes, it strengthens its position in the industry, enabling a vast ecosystem of Windows-based applications to be deployed on the platform. For Windows operators and developers, this means they can use the same tools and processes to manage their Windows and Linux workloads, taking full advantage of the efficiencies of the cloud-native ecosystem powered by Kubernetes. Let’s dig in a little bit into these.

Operator Advantages

  • Gain operational efficiencies by leveraging existing investments in solutions, tools, and technologies to manage Windows containers the same way as Linux containers
  • Knowledge, training and expertise on container orchestration transfers to Windows container support
  • IT can deliver a scalable self-service container platform to Linux and Windows developers

Developer Advantages

  • Containers simplify packaging and deploying applications during development and test. Now you also get to take advantage of Kubernetes’ benefits in creating reliable, secure, and scalable distributed applications.
  • Windows developers can now take advantage of the growing ecosystem of cloud and container-native tools to build and deploy faster, resulting in a faster time to market for their applications
  • Taking advantage of Kubernetes as the leader in container orchestration, developers only need to learn how to use Kubernetes and that skillset will transfer across development environments and across clouds

CIO Advantages

  • Leverage the operational and cost efficiencies that are introduced with Kubernetes
  • Containerize existing.NET applications or Windows-based workloads to eliminate old hardware or underutilized virtual machines, and streamline migration from end-of-support OS versions. You retain the benefit your application brings to the business, but decrease the cost of keeping it running

“Using Kubernetes on Windows allows us to run our internal web applications as microservices. This provides quick scaling in response to load, smoother upgrades, and allows for different development groups to build without worry of other group's version dependencies. We save money because development times are shorter and operation's time is not spent maintaining multiple virtual machine environments,” said Jeremy, a lead devops engineer working for a top multinational legal firm, one of the early adopters of Windows on Kubernetes.

There are many features that are surfaced with this release. We want to turn your attention to a few key features and enablers of Windows support in Kubernetes. For a detailed list of supported functionality, you can read our documentation.

  • You can now add Windows Server 2019 worker nodes
  • You can now schedule Windows containers utilizing deployments, pods, services, and workload controllers
  • Out of tree CNI plugins are provided for Azure, OVN-Kubernetes, and Flannel
  • Containers can utilize a variety of in and out-of-tree storage plugins
  • Improved support for metrics/quotas closely matches the capabilities offered for Linux containers

When looking at Windows support in Kubernetes, many start drawing comparisons to Linux containers. Although some of the comparisons that highlight limitations are fair, it is important to distinguish between operational limitations and differences between the Windows and Linux operating systems. From a container management standpoint, we must strike a balance between preserving OS-specific behaviors required for application compatibility, and reaching operational consistency in Kubernetes across multiple operating systems. For example, some Linux-specific file system features, user IDs and permissions exposed through Kubernetes will not work on Windows today, and users are familiar with these fundamental differences. We will also be adding support for Windows-specific configurations to meet the needs of Windows customers that may not exist on Linux. The alpha support for Windows Group Managed Service Accounts is one example. Other areas such as memory reservations for Windows pods and the Windows kubelet are a work in progress and highlight an operational limitation. We will continue working on operational limitations based on what’s important to our community in future releases.

Today, Kubernetes master components will continue to run on Linux. That way users can add Windows nodes without having to create a separate Kubernetes cluster. As always, our future direction is set by the community, so more components, features and deployment methods will come over time. Users should understand the differences between Windows and Linux and utilize the advantages of each platform. Our goal with this release is not to make Windows interchangeable with Linux or to answer the question of Windows vs Linux. We offer consistency in management. Managing workloads without automation is tedious and expensive. Rewriting or re-architecting workloads is even more expensive. Containers provide a clear path forward whether your app runs on Linux or Windows, and Kubernetes brings an IT organization operational consistency.

As a community, our work is not complete. As already mentioned , we still have a fair bit of limitations and a healthy roadmap. We will continue making progress and enhancing Windows container support in Kubernetes, with some notable upcoming features including:

  • Support for CRI-ContainerD and Hyper-V isolation, bringing hypervisor-level isolation between pods for additional security and extending our container-to-node compatibility matrix
  • Additional network plugins, including the stable release of Flannel overlay support
  • Simple heterogeneous cluster creation using kubeadm on Windows

We welcome you to get involved and join our community to share feedback and deployment stories, and contribute to code, docs, and improvements of any kind.

Thank you and feel free to reach us individually if you have any questions.

Michael Michael
SIG-Windows Chair
Director of Product Management, VMware
@michmike77 on Twitter
@m2 on Slack

Patrick Lang
SIG-Windows Chair
Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft
@PatrickLang on Slack