Windows container mode for windows servers

General
1

We are using following windows host to build images and you can see below version details

PS C:\Windows\system32> docker version
Client:
Version: 28.1.0
API version: 1.49
Go version: go1.23.8
Git commit: 4d8c241
Built: Thu Apr 17 09:55:20 2025
OS/Arch: windows/amd64
Context: default

Server: Docker Engine - Community
Engine:
Version: 28.1.0
API version: 1.49 (minimum version 1.24)
Go version: go1.23.8
Git commit: 3f46cad
Built: Thu Apr 17 09:54:15 2025
OS/Arch: windows/amd64
Experimental: false

windows server 2019 standard

now my question is :

how do i ensure above server is running in Windows container mode.? Please suggest

2

As to my knowledge, Docker on Windows is only capable of running Windows containers. There is no way to not run Windows containers.

3

To be more precise, you are using Docker Engine which has no modes. Docker containers are always relying on the kernel of the host, so you can’t run Linux containers on Windows or Windows containers on Linux. Docker Desktop supports creating a Linux virtual machine on Windows, and all Linux containers rrun in that VM. That is why you can switch between Windows containers and Linux containers, because the docker client is just reconfigured to connect to another API endpoint.

Docker Desktop is not supported on Windows server, so you can only use the engine and you will not be able to switch to Linux containers mode

4

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