Run Docker on Windows without virtualization

gabriel giovanini picture gabriel giovanini · Jun 21, 2016 · Viewed 9.5k times · Source

I'd like to know if I can run docker with a windows containers on windows machine without machine virtualization, like it is on Linux.

Because I have my whole environment running on windows machines on azure, and it would be much easier to add docker to my current workflow if docker ran on windows without machine virtualization.

And If not, will it be possible in a near future?

Answer

VonC picture VonC · Jun 21, 2016

like it is on Linux.

On Linux, it is "Docker on Linux". If you want to run that docker on Windows, you need a VM: VirtualBox or, with docker 1.12, Hyper-V: see getting started.
But even that "Docker for Windows" is there to create a Linux VM, where Docker on Linux can operate.

And there is a Docker for AWS beta just announced yesterday. Again, that would use a Linux instance. An instance is a virtual server in the AWS cloud.
That would still be for enabling Docker on Linux.

Docker on Windows will be available only on Windows Server 2016 TP5+: see its documentation.
That is the only one which would run actual Windows image as containers.