Published on 29 Jul 2016
When Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), the announcement claimed that developers are the primary target of this feature in the Windows client operating system. I don’t believe this is the real reason behind the WSL. I believe that Microsoft is silently preparing to bring Linux container to Windows to establish Windows as the de-facto standard for cross-platform container environments.
Published on 24 Jun 2016
When I started working on a Windows container for my Minecraft server, I realized that my installation was also in dire need of an update to the latest version of SpigotMC. This does not come as a source release so it needs to be compiled manually. Therefore, I investigated how the build process can be banished into a container. Here is how it is done!
Published on 21 Jun 2016
Last year I blogged about running a Minecraft server for friends and family. Today I will explain how I have banished it into a Windows container using Docker! This is another step avoiding Java on the host. But let’s start at the beginning.
Published on 17 Jun 2016
You have probably noticed my enthusiasm for PowerShell Desired State Configuration (PSDSC). After posting how Microsoft has integrated the Docker engine with containers in Windows Server 2016 TP5, I started investigating how PSDSC can be used in container. I have created two examples to demonstrate this.
Published on 15 Jun 2016
The Docker toolbox is a package to install the binaries required for managing a Docker-based container environment targetting Windows and OS X. Unfortunately, it forces you to install VirtualBox, Oracle’s type 2 hypervisor. Although a silent installation is documented, it is very successfully hidden how the individual components of this package can be installed or left out.
Published on 08 Jun 2016
Microsoft is working hard to align the management experience of containers on Windows Server 2016 with the industry standard Docker on Linux. I will demonstrate how the same concepts and the same management tools now apply to containers in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 as well. Let’s take a closer look at the famous Docker slogan Build, Ship and Run.
Published on 31 May 2016
So far, I have provided a detailed introduction to Jekyll and using it to create your own blog by exporting your content from WordPress as well as hosting on Azure Websites and hosting on GitHub Pages. Those posts only describe how to get started but leave a lot to be desired when comparing with full-blown content management systems. In this post I will close this gap.
Published on 30 May 2016
I have been writing a lot of pester based unit tests for PowerShell lately. Unfortunately, I am coming across caveats when testing existing code. I have just been testing code involving PowerShell remoting which creates a new context where mocked cmdlets are not available. I will show you how to write unit tests for remoting code.
Published on 17 May 2016
In a previous post, I demonstrated how pester can be used for writing unit tests checking configuration data for PowerShell Desired State Configuration. I assumed that the data structure for configuration data was already present in memory. In real life, the environment data contained in configuration data is stored in a file. Therefore, I will show you how to load data structures from a file with and without code.
Published on 03 May 2016
In XenApp 7, Citrix offers a very comprehensive PowerShell SDK and introduces cmdlets for migrating the database to a new connection string. If the steps for clearing and setting the database connection are not followed very closely, the database connection may not be recoverable using PowerShell. This article describes an alternative to using PowerShell.