I hope everyone had a great summer, got rejuvenated and is ready to get in the busy but exciting Fall season.
Today I am very happy to announce the release of Windows Container on Azure Kubernetes Service Demos.
GitHub Repo: Windows Container on Azure Kubernetes Service Demos
This Demos repo is a collection of demos to show how you can modernize Windows Server applications with Windows containers running on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Our goal is that with those demos, you can quickly get a sense for how that modernization works end-to-end from the app to running on AKS. We partnered with Click2Cloud Inc. and selected 3 apps that represent the top app patterns we have seen using Windows Containers. The patterns are:
- ASP.NET + IIS based web apps, running on Windows Server Core containers, with a SQL database in the backend. Some of the apps use gMSA for Active Directory authentication. This represents the majority of our customer base.
- Python + Django based web apps, running on Windows Nano Server containers. This is to show while the majority of our customers today use Server Core containers, there are also plenty of other apps and workloads you can use with other Windows base container images such as Nano Server containers.
Here are more details of the 3 demos.
|
Name |
Original App Link |
Demo Link |
Windows base image |
Framework |
|
eShop |
https://github.com/dotnet-architecture/eShopModernizing
a popular open-sourced back-office web app demo authored by the .NET Team from Microsoft |
https://github.com/microsoft/windows-containers-demos/tree/main/eshop-mvc-modernized-app |
Windows Server 2019 Server Core container |
ASP.NET WebForms & MVC + IIS |
|
TicketDesk |
https://github.com/NullDesk/ticketdesk/tree/ticketdesk-v2.1/TicketDesk-2,
a legacy open-sourced back-office web app |
https://github.com/microsoft/windows-containers-demos/tree/main/ticket-desk |
Windows Server 2019 Server Core container |
ASP.NET MVC+ IIS |
|
Django poll app |
https://github.com/devmahmud/Django-Poll-App an open-sourced full featured polling web app |
https://github.com/microsoft/windows-containers-demos/tree/main/django-poll-app |
Windows Server 2019 Nano Server container |
Python + Django |
We picked the following common Azure services to demo:
- Azure Container Registry (ACR)
- Azure Key Vaults
- Azure SQL
- Azure Storage Account
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Defender and Security tool
- Network Policy for CNI- Calico
- Azure Active Directory (AAD)
- gMSA on Azure Kubernetes Service (in the eShop demo)
- Cluster Auto Scaler
- Cluster Auto Upgrade
Under each folder of the demos at the repo, you can find the following:
- Readme.md: gives an overview of the demo, explains the pre-requisites, walks through the architecture with diagrams, followed with a high-level tutorial on key steps taken such as what Azure services are used and how, along with relevant source code and scripts.
- “applications” folder: contains the source code of the app before it’s deployed on AKS
- “images” folder: contains architectural diagrams and other images such as a sample screenshot.
- “scripts” folder: contains scripts used to deploy the app to AKS.
- video file (.mp4 format): gives a visual tutorial of how the demo app is containerized and deployed on AKS.
For example, here is the architecture diagram for the TicketDesk demo.
If you are a visual person like me and wanted short-cuts to view those demos in action, here are the links:
The demos here are more focused on showing how to take containerized Windows apps and deploy to AKS leveraging various Azure services. If you are looking for how to containerize existing apps with Windows containers, the so called “Lift and Shift”, we have recently released some amazing updates on our documentation page here Lift and shift to containers . The team has addressed various feedback from customers in this update. I’d suggest you bring a cup of coffee or tea to enjoy the reading 
.
Please note this repo is for demos only, not for production use. They are not an official product release either. Hence there is no customer support. However, we do love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to share at the Discussions tab. Thank you.
Weijuan