Can docker run in production on windows server?

General
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Hi

I use docker to develop and demo on windows 11 and deploy to production on Debian
Today I am asked to deploy this on Windows server, I thought it was possible…

The doc is very clear that it is possible in production and possible on Linux and Windows

Docker engine on linux shows no major difficulty but the docker desktop doc does not seem to describe a solution for putting it into production as I can do from my W11 session.

Question 1 : Is it possible to run Docker (engine or desktop) on Windows server for a production service?
Question 2 : If so, what is the best practice for doing so? I tried this (with --always-run-service) but didn’t succeed Windows | Docker Docs

thanks in advance

PS1 : It’s a small application, a raspberry Pi5 can run it correctly
PS2 : I don’t need the docker desktop features
PS3 : my organization and my clients are much smaller than 250 employees

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Docker and Docker Desktop is not the same. “What is Docker” mentions Docker which is used in production, but Docker Desktop is for development.

For production Windows containers on Windows server, you need to read Microsoft’s documentation

Docker Desktop is not supported on Windows server

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Thank you for your response
Does “Windows containers” mean a container that runs on a Windows machine or is it a specific container?

Can Docker CE, Mirantis or Containerd run several containers described in a docker-compose file?
If it’s different I probably have a better time installing all my tools without containers. sad constat.

Thanks

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Windows container means running windows apps in containers. A container is about isolation. One OS and a process isolated on it. I just assumed you want to run Windows containers as you wanted to run it on Windows servers, but there is no Linux container (Linux app in containers) on Windows. Exactly because you can’t isolate a Linux process on a Windows OS. You need the Linux OS for it first.

So if you need Linux containers, you will need to start a Linux VM on Windows server so you are back to where you started. Docker CE installed on Debian.

You can run as many containers as you want. (as many as available IP-s in the configured subnets and your resources allow you)

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It is a great disappointment to discover that we cannot deploy a Docker application in production on Windows because the good functioning of Docker desktop (which hides the complexity of the thing) had led me to believe so.
But it’s finally a good thing, I really didn’t like the idea of ​​using this Windows machine…
Thanks a lot

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