Finally after five technical preview, Windows Server 2016 is now officially in GA. For more information see the Ultimate Guide to Windows Server 2016 or the new features of this OS.
Remember the big change in licensing: now cores will count for the total number of needed licenses and you can start to re-consider also servers with one socker and lot of cores in your design.
You can download the evaluation and experience first-hand how Windows Server 2016 can work for you:
Another way to try, test or use it, is from Azure that already has Windows Server 2016 virtual machine in its catalog.
Also the Docker’s team has announced the expansion of the Docker platform beyond Linux workloads to support Windows Server applications. The Commercially Supported Docker Engine (CS Docker Engine) is now available at no additional cost with every edition of Windows Server 2016.
Through their partnership with Microsoft, Docker brings the agility, portability, and security benefits of the Docker platform beyond the Linux ecosystem to Windows Server applications – legacy and new. Containerize applications and give them seamless mobility across any infrastructure, whether bare metal, virtualized, or cloud.
To begin your journey to microservices and DevOps for Windows Server based applications with Docker there are some webinars to learn more about the technology and how to start:
- October 13th, 10AM PST – Docker for Windows Server 2016
- October 25th, 10AM PST – Containerize Windows workloads with Image2Docker Tool
Also read Docker’s blog to build and run your first Docker Windows container.
