Standalone .NET application with Docker Container deployment

I just discovered Docker recently and after spending a lot of time reading about it, I still not found any “full” tutorial explaining how does Docker work with a standalone applications on Windows.

In fact, I’ve a client-server application developed in C# .NET where the client is a WPF application and the server is WCF service, Web service and MySQL database.

I’m thinking to use a Docker container to deploy the server part, but I’m not sure if I understand well the Docker containers.

My scenario:

I want to make the deployment easier for the end user by providing a single setup file to install everything needed, including a Docker container containing my services and database already configured and ready to run. but I’m not sure if is possible to include Docker container inside the setup package and deploy it later easily.

For that reason I’m having some question and hope find answers for them:

  • Is the scenario described in my target possible?
  • Is it possible to run Docker on Windows without installing VirtualBox ?
  • What is a format of a Docker Container? Is it one single package file?

If my scenario is possible:

  • Is it a good idea? Or there are other better solutions?
  • Do I need to include Docker in my setup to run the Docker container in the end-user machine?

Thanks for your help.

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