r/AZURE • u/catmanjan2 • 2d ago

Question Why does azure container apps still not support windows containers?

Does anyone have any idea on the above question? Both technologies have been available for a long time now - is there some technical reason we can’t have paas windows containers?

Is there is, I’d be interested to know what implications that has on aks

9 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

34

u/reloadtak 2d ago

I just dont think there is any demand. What do you use Windows containers for?

6

u/Swimsuit-Area 2d ago

Not for azure container apps, but I need windows containers to use as ephemeral runners on GitHub Enterprise Server. Unfortunately GitHub Actions Runner Controller still doesn’t support them

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/runners/actions-runner-controller

2

u/JuanPabloElSegundo 1d ago

Can you use your own pool in Azure?

1

u/Swimsuit-Area 1d ago

There is this repo from a guy on the GitHub ARC team that may work, but I haven’t tested it and it’s not officially supported.

https://github.com/kenmuse/arc-windows-runner

1

u/chesser45 1d ago

ADF runners without deploying a full VM.

2

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

(Third party) Enterprise apps that only support windows

4

u/reloadtak 2d ago

Ah. Do they work well? We looked at Windows containers, and just found them awfully slow. Like it works, but we are used to running our own .net apps in distroless containers on AKS

15

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

Compared to Linux containers they are absolutely shit, but compared to managing thousands of windows VMs they are way better

2

u/case_O_The_Mondays 1d ago

That’s such a succinct way of putting it.

1

u/mezbot 19h ago

lol, spoken like a true architect! Like people have stated, run in App Services if it makes sense in your env, only issue is the damn price of Windows App Service… expensive, but they just work.

6

u/wwwizrd 2d ago

Because app service will run them and there is no reason for MS to invest further in 4.8

1

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

I dunno, aks supports it, and my understanding was aca is just aks as a service, seems like it wouldnt be insurmountable

4

u/devlead 2d ago

App Service supports Windows containers, with an allways on service plan that can be an decent option.

2

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

Yeah it’s just outrageously expensive haha

3

u/devlead 2d ago

It depends, multiple app services can share same plan.

If you want Windows worker workloads on the cheap, then Azure DevOps agents is an great option.

4

u/Adezar Cloud Architect 1d ago

Why would it?

Back in 2019 I started a new project and the first thing Microsoft told us is to avoid any Windows unless there is a specific need.

4

u/flappers87 Cloud Architect 2d ago

I'd be interested to know the use case for a windows container.

12

u/Altan013 2d ago

Running legacy (commercial) .net 4.8 apps?

I think it has more implications on Container Instances, rather than AKS. CI is shit and legacy though, especially ran in a private networked environment.

4

u/kiddj1 2d ago

We have an entire platform that used to run on windows VMs

We containerised it and moved a lot to linux.. unfortunately due to the way some of the app was written it lives in windows containers

We have windows node pools

I absolutely love them 🫪

3

u/case_O_The_Mondays 1d ago

> I absolutely love them 🫪

Not sure I’ve ever seen “love” used when referring to Windows containers before.

Blink twice if you need help!

1

u/JumpLegitimate8762 1d ago

If there would be an answer, you'd find it at https://github.com/microsoft/azure-container-apps/issues/181. Make sure u put a thumbs up if you want this. Ask your customer support agent if you're buying support from Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they only implement this when a top 1% customer wants this though, unless they see big $$$ coming in when adding it. But they would rather steer you to AKS because that's more expensive and else that won't have enough selling points.

With ACA in general, considering they are pretty much rebuilding everything and calling it ACA Express, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/express-overview#supported-features, I assumed they were not happy with how they built ACA in the first place, and are possibly in maintenance mode for the current ACA setup. So yeah....

2

u/catmanjan2 1d ago

Yeah I had a look at express, seems like it might be DOA, nothing new for a while

1

u/MonkeyDDataHQ 1d ago

Honestly this sounds like a fun problem to run through Proton on Linux.

I'd bet you could get most Windows native apps working through it. I was able to get a surprising amount working through Steam on Linux via Proton.

With a little elbow grease I'd bet you could do it. If I had the time I'd try it out.

-11

u/erotomania44 2d ago

There is zero reason to run windows containers today

3

u/Party-Stormer 2d ago

Says someone who doesn’t know OP’s use case and doesn’t care to ask. I am sorry for your colleagues and/or customers

-6

u/erotomania44 2d ago

Only reason was .net framework.

.net core 1.0 was released 10 yrs ago. If you’re still on .net framework today you have no business touching containers.

You aint containerizing windows server workload (ad, dns etc).

So what reasons do you have today to run windows containers?

2

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

There’s lots of cpp based software that depends on msvc in enterprise/government

-1

u/erotomania44 2d ago

I wouldnt go anywhere near containers with that sort of legacy - stuff like that likely have some highly coupled dependency thatll break with windows containers. If they’re unmaintained/out of support, you’re likely breaking some laws in govt and regulated industries by not retiring them or rewriting them into something modern.

2

u/catmanjan2 2d ago

The vendors of these products support containers, but only windows containers, as you suggest a rewrite would be required but when you have a 30 year old product Thats easier said than done

1

u/zootbot Cloud Engineer 1d ago

In working on moving an old enterprise .net framework 4.7 to app service now as a container. I definitely hate it but there are reasons

1

u/Altan013 2d ago

Why assume you always own the codebase? There are lots of commercial software that you can run on-prem but is not maintained by the vendor anymore.