jbaig
commented
4 years ago In my original issue #1842 the problem is more about nanoserver reaching end of life much before the LTSC of the server hosting it and how companies should plan if they want to use .net core with docker on windows. The 1809 (Windows Server 2019 LTSC) was scheduled to reach EOL in May [now pushed back to November - Lifecycle changes announced on April 14, 2020], but what will that mean for users using .net core with docker on Windows Server 2019 after November?
The servercore image is over 10x larger than the nanoserver image, so although having an official .net core image would be preferred, going from ~350megs to ~5gigs is not ideal. Is there any way the nanoserver Life Cycle can be adjusted or a similarly smaller footprint base image be created that lasts for almost as long as the life of the LTSC server it is hosted on?
richlander
TheBlueSky
MichaelSimons
ssa3512
sritapa
Escoto
biiiipy
uBpringlIoNaRys
mthalman
prabh-62
jzabroski
Request for feedback: Should we produce .NET Core + Server Core container images?
We are exploring the possibility of producing .NET Core + Server Core container images. This is due to hearing feedback from .NET Core users that the Nano Server lifecycle relative to a Windows Server host doesn't work well. We have also seen users needing to use Server Core images because Nano Server is not compatible with their workload.
Feedback:
Some context: We have long believed (on the .NET team) that customer demand for the combination of .NET Core and Server Core would be low and that producing .NET Core images for both Server Core and Nano Server would be confusing and send a mixed message. In short, we thought that nearly all .NET Core users would want Nano Server images. With that in mind, we decided to let customers produce Server Core container images themselves (but, of course, still support .NET Core with Server Core, generally). We are re-assessing this viewpoint and stance, but need your feedback to do so.
It would be very useful to know how many people/companies would use .NET Core + Server Core images if we made them available. Please tell us if you'd use these images, if you would use them instead of the .NET Core + Nano Server images, and what type of app you would host, preferably in this issue. If you are willing (or would prefer a private conversation), we will want to talk to you directly to learn more about your scenarios. You can reach out to me at rlander@ms.
Details
We have discussed a few different variants of what .NET Core + Server Core images could look like. There are two (meta) use cases we are considering, in terms of the types of apps that you host across your containerized .NET app portfolio:
Some context: In order to get the best performance for .NET Framework apps, we need to NGEN the framework. In fact, without NGEN, the performance is not acceptable. See https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet-framework-docker/issues/29 for past experience on this topic. NGEN is even more important starting with the Server Core 2004 container image release. See: We made Windows Server Core container images 40% smaller.
If we were to publish Server Core images, we'd need to decide if we should NGEN the framework, which would have a non-trivial size impact. Example of NGEN usage: .NET Framework runtime image. Enabling IIS and ASP.NET (not Core) support would require similar configuration and size impact.
Some people might say ... "Hey, this is .NET Core; don't worry about .NET Framework." It's not so simple. We know that a non-trivial set of users will end up using the .NET Framework in these Server Core images, and then be unhappy, but not know why. We have found over time that users do everything imaginable (and beyond that) with the product, so we have to prepare for a lot of eventualities. We are one team responsible for two products and need to consider a broad set of scenarios in which images might be used.
Possible configurations
The following is a set of configurations that we can imagine supporting (some of which resolve the .NET Framework-related topics I've raised). I've provided names for these configurations to help frame what the benefit would be. We'd like you to tell us which of these options you like best, or if you'd want multiple. If your preferred option is missing, please tell us that, too.
dotnet-core/aspnet:3.1-windowsservercore-1909,dotnet/aspnet:5.0-windowsservercore-1909). This approach matches current practice (same model used for .NET Core on Nano Server, today). Details: do not NGEN the .NET Framework, or pre-install IIS or ASP.NET.There are lots of sub-options for each of these, some of which we've already identified. For example, we could publish images aligning with options #1 and #2 in .NET Core docker repos and images aligning with option #3 in either .NET Core or .NET Framework repos. It all depends on how we want to approach this larger topic, and the scenarios we want to enable (and that you need).
I've only provided the tagging scheme for the first option, since it is so obvious. We have identified tagging schemes for the other two options, but they are more complicated (consolidation inherently complicates tagging), so we'll only continue to explore and share those if we we see interest in these other options. We want to keep this conversation as high-level as possible.
Please share your feedback!