Black lives matter.
We stand in solidarity with the Black community.
Racism is unacceptable.
It conflicts with the core values of the Kubernetes project and our community does not tolerate it.
We stand in solidarity with the Black community.
Racism is unacceptable.
It conflicts with the core values of the Kubernetes project and our community does not tolerate it.
Windows applications constitute a large portion of the services and applications that run in many organizations. This guide walks you through the steps to configure and deploy a Windows container in Kubernetes.
To deploy a Windows container on Kubernetes, you must first create an example application. The example YAML file below creates a simple webserver application. Create a service spec named win-webserver.yaml
with the contents below:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: win-webserver
labels:
app: win-webserver
spec:
ports:
# the port that this service should serve on
- port: 80
targetPort: 80
selector:
app: win-webserver
type: NodePort
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
labels:
app: win-webserver
name: win-webserver
spec:
replicas: 2
selector:
matchLabels:
app: win-webserver
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: win-webserver
name: win-webserver
spec:
containers:
- name: windowswebserver
image: mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019
command:
- powershell.exe
- -command
- "<#code used from https://gist.github.com/wagnerandrade/5424431#> ; $$listener = New-Object System.Net.HttpListener ; $$listener.Prefixes.Add('http://*:80/') ; $$listener.Start() ; $$callerCounts = @{} ; Write-Host('Listening at http://*:80/') ; while ($$listener.IsListening) { ;$$context = $$listener.GetContext() ;$$requestUrl = $$context.Request.Url ;$$clientIP = $$context.Request.RemoteEndPoint.Address ;$$response = $$context.Response ;Write-Host '' ;Write-Host('> {0}' -f $$requestUrl) ; ;$$count = 1 ;$$k=$$callerCounts.Get_Item($$clientIP) ;if ($$k -ne $$null) { $$count += $$k } ;$$callerCounts.Set_Item($$clientIP, $$count) ;$$ip=(Get-NetAdapter | Get-NetIpAddress); $$header='<html><body><H1>Windows Container Web Server</H1>' ;$$callerCountsString='' ;$$callerCounts.Keys | % { $$callerCountsString+='<p>IP {0} callerCount {1} ' -f $$ip[1].IPAddress,$$callerCounts.Item($$_) } ;$$footer='</body></html>' ;$$content='{0}{1}{2}' -f $$header,$$callerCountsString,$$footer ;Write-Output $$content ;$$buffer = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($$content) ;$$response.ContentLength64 = $$buffer.Length ;$$response.OutputStream.Write($$buffer, 0, $$buffer.Length) ;$$response.Close() ;$$responseStatus = $$response.StatusCode ;Write-Host('< {0}' -f $$responseStatus) } ; "
nodeSelector:
kubernetes.io/os: windows
Note: Port mapping is also supported, but for simplicity in this example the container port 80 is exposed directly to the service.
Check that all nodes are healthy:
kubectl get nodes
Deploy the service and watch for pod updates:
kubectl apply -f win-webserver.yaml
kubectl get pods -o wide -w
When the service is deployed correctly both Pods are marked as Ready. To exit the watch command, press Ctrl+C.
Check that the deployment succeeded. To verify:
docker ps
kubectl get pods
curl
port 80 of your pod IPs from the Linux master to check for a web server responsecurl
the virtual service IP (seen under kubectl get services
) from the Linux master and from individual podscurl
the service name with the Kubernetes default DNS suffixcurl
the NodePort from the Linux master or machines outside of the clustercurl
external IPs from inside the pod using kubectl execNote: Windows container hosts are not able to access the IP of services scheduled on them due to current platform limitations of the Windows networking stack. Only Windows pods are able to access service IPs.
Logs are an important element of observability; they enable users to gain insights into the operational aspect of workloads and are a key ingredient to troubleshooting issues. Because Windows containers and workloads inside Windows containers behave differently from Linux containers, users had a hard time collecting logs, limiting operational visibility. Windows workloads for example are usually configured to log to ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) or push entries to the application event log. LogMonitor, an open source tool by Microsoft, is the recommended way to monitor configured log sources inside a Windows container. LogMonitor supports monitoring event logs, ETW providers, and custom application logs, piping them to STDOUT for consumption by kubectl logs <pod>
.
Follow the instructions in the LogMonitor GitHub page to copy its binaries and configuration files to all your containers and add the necessary entrypoints for LogMonitor to push your logs to STDOUT.
Starting with Kubernetes v1.16, Windows containers can be configured to run their entrypoints and processes with different usernames than the image defaults. The way this is achieved is a bit different from the way it is done for Linux containers. Learn more about it here.
Starting with Kubernetes v1.14, Windows container workloads can be configured to use Group Managed Service Accounts (GMSA). Group Managed Service Accounts are a specific type of Active Directory account that provides automatic password management, simplified service principal name (SPN) management, and the ability to delegate the management to other administrators across multiple servers. Containers configured with a GMSA can access external Active Directory Domain resources while carrying the identity configured with the GMSA. Learn more about configuring and using GMSA for Windows containers here.
Users today need to use some combination of taints and node selectors in order to keep Linux and Windows workloads on their respective OS-specific nodes. This likely imposes a burden only on Windows users. The recommended approach is outlined below, with one of its main goals being that this approach should not break compatibility for existing Linux workloads.
Users can ensure Windows containers can be scheduled on the appropriate host using Taints and Tolerations. All Kubernetes nodes today have the following default labels:
If a Pod specification does not specify a nodeSelector like "kubernetes.io/os": windows
, it is possible the Pod can be scheduled on any host, Windows or Linux. This can be problematic since a Windows container can only run on Windows and a Linux container can only run on Linux. The best practice is to use a nodeSelector.
However, we understand that in many cases users have a pre-existing large number of deployments for Linux containers, as well as an ecosystem of off-the-shelf configurations, such as community Helm charts, and programmatic Pod generation cases, such as with Operators. In those situations, you may be hesitant to make the configuration change to add nodeSelectors. The alternative is to use Taints. Because the kubelet can set Taints during registration, it could easily be modified to automatically add a taint when running on Windows only.
For example: --register-with-taints='os=windows:NoSchedule'
By adding a taint to all Windows nodes, nothing will be scheduled on them (that includes existing Linux Pods). In order for a Windows Pod to be scheduled on a Windows node, it would need both the nodeSelector to choose Windows, and the appropriate matching toleration.
nodeSelector:
kubernetes.io/os: windows
node.kubernetes.io/windows-build: '10.0.17763'
tolerations:
- key: "os"
operator: "Equal"
value: "windows"
effect: "NoSchedule"
The Windows Server version used by each pod must match that of the node. If you want to use multiple Windows Server versions in the same cluster, then you should set additional node labels and nodeSelectors.
Kubernetes 1.17 automatically adds a new label node.kubernetes.io/windows-build
to simplify this. If you're running an older version, then it's recommended to add this label manually to Windows nodes.
This label reflects the Windows major, minor, and build number that need to match for compatibility. Here are values used today for each Windows Server version.
Product Name | Build Number(s) |
---|---|
Windows Server 2019 | 10.0.17763 |
Windows Server version 1809 | 10.0.17763 |
Windows Server version 1903 | 10.0.18362 |
RuntimeClass can be used to simplify the process of using taints and tolerations. A cluster administrator can create a RuntimeClass
object which is used to encapsulate these taints and tolerations.
runtimeClasses.yml
. It includes the appropriate nodeSelector
for the Windows OS, architecture, and version.apiVersion: node.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: RuntimeClass
metadata:
name: windows-2019
handler: 'docker'
scheduling:
nodeSelector:
kubernetes.io/os: 'windows'
kubernetes.io/arch: 'amd64'
node.kubernetes.io/windows-build: '10.0.17763'
tolerations:
- effect: NoSchedule
key: os
operator: Equal
value: "windows"
kubectl create -f runtimeClasses.yml
using as a cluster administratorruntimeClassName: windows-2019
as appropriate to Pod specsFor example:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: iis-2019
labels:
app: iis-2019
spec:
replicas: 1
template:
metadata:
name: iis-2019
labels:
app: iis-2019
spec:
runtimeClassName: windows-2019
containers:
- name: iis
image: mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore/iis:windowsservercore-ltsc2019
resources:
limits:
cpu: 1
memory: 800Mi
requests:
cpu: .1
memory: 300Mi
ports:
- containerPort: 80
selector:
matchLabels:
app: iis-2019
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: iis
spec:
type: LoadBalancer
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 80
selector:
app: iis-2019