Get started: Run your first Windows
container
11/12/2019 • 3 minutes to read • +2
In this article
Install a container base image
Run a Windows container
Run a Windows container using Windows Admin Center
Next steps
This topic describes how to run your first Windows container, after setting up your
environment as described in Get started: Prep Windows for containers. To run a
container, you first install a base image, which provides a foundational layer of
operating system services to your container. Then you create and run a container image,
which is based upon the base image. For details, read on.
Install a container base image
All containers are created from container images. Microsoft offers several starter
images, called base images, to choose from (for more details, see Container base
images). This procedures pulls (downloads and installs) the lightweight Nano Server
base image.
1. Open a command prompt window (such as the built-in command prompt,
PowerShell, or Windows Terminal ), and then run the following command to
download and install the base image:
Console ＝ Copy
docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver:1903
Tip
If you see an error message that says no matching manifest for unknown
in the manifest list entries , make sure Docker isn't configured to run
Linux containers.
2. After the image is finished downloading—read the EULA while you wait—verify its
existence on your system by querying your local docker image repository. Running
the command docker images returns a list of installed images.
Here's an example of the output showing the Nano Server image.
Console ＝ Copy
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID
CREATED SIZE
microsoft/nanoserver latest 105d76d0f40e 4
days ago 652 MB
Run a Windows container
For this simple example, a ‘Hello World’ container image will be created and deployed.
For the best experience, run these commands in an elevated command prompt window
(but don't use the Windows PowerShell ISE—it doesn't work for interactive sessions with
containers, as the containers appear to hang).
1. Start a container with an interactive session from the nanoserver image by
entering the following command in your command prompt window:
Console ＝ Copy
docker run -it mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver:1903 cmd.exe
2. After the container is started, the command prompt window changes context to
the container. Inside the container, we'll create a simple ‘Hello World’ text file and
then exit the container by entering the following commands:
cmd ＝ Copy
echo "Hello World!" > Hello.txt
exit
3. Get the container ID for the container you just exited by running the docker ps
command:
Console ＝ Copy
docker ps -a
4. Create a new ‘HelloWorld’ image that includes the changes in the first container
you ran. To do so, run the docker commit command, replacing <containerid>
with the ID of your container:
Console ＝ Copy
docker commit <containerid> helloworld
When completed, you now have a custom image that contains the hello world
script. This can be seen with the docker images command.
Console ＝ Copy
docker images
Here's an example of the output:
Console ＝ Copy
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE
ID CREATED SIZE
helloworld latest
a1064f2ec798 10 seconds ago 258MB
mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver 1903
2b9c381d0911 3 weeks ago 256MB
5. Finally, run the new container by using the docker run command with the --rm
parameter that automatically removes the container once the command line
(cmd.exe) stops.
Console ＝ Copy
docker run --rm helloworld cmd.exe /s /c type Hello.txt
The result is that Docker created a container from the 'HelloWorld' image, Docker
started an instance of cmd.exe in the container, and the cmd.exe read our file and
output the contents to the shell. As the final step, Docker stopped and removed
the container.
Run a Windows container using Windows
Admin Center
Windows Admin Center can be used to run your containers locally. Specifically, you use
the the Containers extension of your Windows Admin Center instance to run the
containers. First, open the container host you want to manage, and in the Tools pane,
select the Containers extension. Then, select the Images tab inside the Container
extension under Container Host.
If your host doesn't have a base container image, select the Pull option which opens the
following:
In the Pull Container Image settings, provide the image URL and the tag. If you aren't
certain which image to pull, Windows Admin Center provides a list of common images
from Microsoft. You can also provide the credentials to pull an image from a private
repository. Once you fill out the necessary information, click Pull. Windows Admin
Center will start the pull process on the container host. After the download is complete,
you should see the new image on the Images tab.
Select the image you want to run, and click Run.
On the Run menu, set up the configuration for the container, such as the container
name, the isolation type, which ports to publish, and memory and CPU allocation.
Additionally, you can append Docker run commands that are not in the UI, such as -v
for persistent volume. For more information on available Docker run parameters, review
the documentation .
Once you have finished the configuration for the container, click Run. You can see the
status of the running containers on the Containers tab:
Next steps
Learn how to containerize a sample app
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