With the Windows Machine Config Operator (WMCO), Red Hat is introducing Windows container support into its Kubernetes distribution OpenShift, creating a common Kubernetes basis for Windows and Linux container workloads. Until now, only Linux applications could be containerized, Windows applications had to run in VMs that were integrated into the OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) via the virtualization layer.

With OpenShift 4.6, Windows applications that were created in Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code can now also be containerized and executed in OpenShift. However, this is currently limited to OCP on Azure and OCP on AWS. Support in OCP on vSphere, on Bare Metal, on Red Hat Virtualization, on Red Hat OpenStack Platform and managed OpenShift offerings such as Azure RH OpenShift and OpenShift Dedicated is to follow.

Largely automated The Windows Machine Config Operator is a prerequisite for containerized Windows applications on OpenShift. The certified OpenShift operator is based on the Kubernetes Operator Framework and, according to Red Hat, is also supported by Microsoft. Administrators can access the WMCO via the Operator Hub in order to integrate and manage their Windows containers in Kubernetes via the OpenShift console.

The WMCO configures Windows VMs as working nodes for the Kubernetes cluster on which the Windows container workloads can then run. To do this, the administrator creates a MachineSet that uses a Windows image with the Docker container runtime installed. The operator then searches for machines with the designation machine.openshift.io/os-id: Windows . In future versions, Windows containers will also have the newer containerd format preferred by Kubernetes.

A detailed guide to containerizing Windows applications under OpenShift 4.6 can be found in Red Hat’s OpenShift blog.

(sun)