Container base images

This topic brings us full circle to our discussion about Server Core and Nano Server. If you have worked with Windows Server for many years, you have probably wondered why Microsoft introduced a new installation option called Nano Server, only to remove it during the next LTSC release. This change happened right around the same time that Microsoft started diving into using Windows Servers as container host servers, and this information directly relates to the question, “What happened to Nano Server?”

Nano Server is now only useful for containers. In fact, you cannot install a Nano Server instance outside of a container. This is its purpose. You do not have to use Nano inside your containers, but it’s one of the options.

Containers are sort of like VMs but at a different level. With VMs you share hardware among multiple full instances of the Windows operating system. Each VM maintains a completely separated kernel from one another...