Savill's FAQs: How to Patch a Container Image

Three times a week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday), John Savill tackles your most pressing IT questions.

Read through the FAQ archives, or send him your questions via email.

Today: Learn about patching Container Images, the size of Nano Server 1709, and Project Honolulu Communications

Q. How do I patch a container image?

A. You don't, in fact for Nano Server 1709 and above its not even possible as the servicing stack was removed. The idea behind containers is you have the composition file that provides the prescriptive steps to create the final image and when its patch time, Microsoft will create a new version of the base OS image which you would pull down and rebuild your image. You would never patch a container, you just rebuild it.

Q. What is the size for Nano Server with 1709?

A. Nano Server was considerably reduced in size in 1709. Compressed it is 78MB (down from 383 in Windows Server 2016 RTM) and uncompressed it is 195 MB (down from 1.05 GB in Windows Server 2016 RTM). If you add in .NET Core runtime those sizes change to 107 MB (compressed) and 262 MB (uncompressed). This size reduction was because Nano was refactored to only be used as a container image which means things like servicing stacks, hardware drivers and more could all be removed.

Q. How does Project Honolulu communicate to the servers it manages?

A. Project Honolulu does not have an agent you need to install on the servers being managed. Instead it uses WMI and WinRM (PowerShell) to communicate and manage the boxes. These are same protocols that are used for nearly ever element of management.