Containers come to Windows with new Windows Server 2016 beta

The third technical preview of Windows Server 2016 was released today, with one new feature in particular sure to attract interest: container support.

Microsoft announced two kinds of container support for Windows Server 2016 back in April. The containers included in today’s release are comparable to similar offerings on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD; while they provide an isolated environment for deploying applications into, they don’t shield apps from the underlying operating system or its version.

Redmond is also promising a second kind of container, Hyper-V containers, which will use operating system virtualization to allow containers to use a different operating system or version from their host. They’re not in today’s build.