Half a year ago, I presented a Windows container for running Minecraft servers. In the meantime, I have enhanced the experience and created a generic container which can be used to run Minecraft servers.
When using Rancher for container management, you need to access the host using SSH to debug some strange behaviour. The SSH private key can be downloaded in an archive containing the Docker certificates as well. I have created a tool to download some or all machine configuration archives at once because the GUI only supports downloading them one by one. What is Rancher, you ask? Read on!
This week I talked (in German) about Windows Containers and Docker at DCUG TecCon in Kassel. DCUG is a German Citrix User Group run by Roy Textor which has organized many meetups in Germany. TecCon is the first two-day conference held in the same spirit. Today, I’d like to share the slide deck as well as the code for my demo.
When I read Stefan Scherer’s post about securing the docker service on Windows, I was thrilled that it can be this easy. But at the same time I was missing the central management facilities of a certificate authority integrated into Active Directory. In this post, I will demonstrate how to create equivalent certificates using a Microsoft Certificate Authority.
I am very proud to announce that I have received the Microsoft MVP award for the 7th time. But now I am a MVP Cloud and Datacenter Management.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.