Looking for suggestions for introducing docker in a Windows organization

This is where we are at:
We have buy-in to deploy docker to host a number of internal tools (selenium grid w/ 50 nodes to start with).
We are a Windows / .Net shop, and machines are on a Windows domain
Selenium Grid is based on non-Windows operating systems
We have a working setup for all the Selenium/Docker on Docker for Windows

The problem:
We are moving this into the nightly build & deploy setup, for this we want to make sure that our docker containers are up (even after a reboot of servers).

I realize that running non-Windows containers on a Windows OS is not intended for more than development, and this is closer to production. (Run docker as a service)
Spinning up a non-Windows persistent (patched, maintained etc.) VM means that we need to create a plan to maintain this VM; meaning accounts, passwords, virus scanners, backups, etc. This creates a lot of extra work.

Do you have any suggestions for mitigating any of the work of introducing a non-Windows VM, or would we be better off cobbling together something that isn’t quite supported through Docker for Windows?

To clarify, we have no desire to modify any of the containers, we prefer to treat these as a black box; they don’t need to run on the domain or have virus scanner etc.