Continuing improvement to Windows Server Containers and the upcoming changes

[Guest Akarsh]

Earlier this year, we announced our concerted effort to reduce the size of Windows Server Container images, and we were delighted with the feedback we received. Today, we are taking a step further to deliver even more improvements based on that feedback as part of the May 2023 release and share our plans for the coming months.

 

 

 

What changed in May 2023 release?

 

 

As previously detailed, Windows Server Container images consist of a base layer and a servicing layer that overlays serviced binaries. This servicing layer includes our own notion of differencing hives as a replacement for the in-box registry hive files. Therefore, we removed certain hive files contained in the Windows\System32\Config directory from the servicing layer.

 

 

 

Additionally, we have found opportunities for modest improvements to other aspects of the image. For example, we’ve disabled unnecessary scheduled tasks and pruned non-essential log files. Finally, we’ve made changes to our image tooling, which should reduce the need to rebaseline our images when certain aspects of our image-generation algorithm change.

 

 

 

What’s next in the coming months?

 

 

Over the course of the next few months, we plan to take further steps to improve our customer experience with Windows containers with the following:

 

 

 

1.

Removal of Edge as a default component in Server and Windows image

: As part of the image size reduction workstream, we are striving to undock the different components of the container image and offer them as an optional component. In the coming months, we will take our first step in this direction by undocking Microsoft Edge from the

Server

and

Windows

images and reducing their size even further. We will publish detailed instructions to add Edge back for the limited set of scenarios that take a dependency on it.

 

 

2.

Foreign Layer removal

: Over the next few months, we will also be removing foreign layers from Windows container base images. This aligns the technology with the licensing change we ⁠

announced

in October 2022. It will enable our customers to redistribute container images from their container registries, aligning with the broader container ecosystem and improving the developer experience. We will share more details in a blog as part of the announcement.

 

 

Closing

 

 

We hope you find value in our continued improvements to Windows Server Containers. The new images are available in Microsoft Artifact Registry (Nano Server, Server Core, Server, Windows), and we look forward to your feedback as we strive to deliver the best experience.

 

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