Create a Windows-based pod in a Kubernetes cluster - Container Service for Kubernetes

Elastic Container Instance supports Windows-based instances. If you want to run containers in a Windows environment, you can add a Windows virtual node to the cluster and schedule pods to run on the Windows virtual node. This way, you can create a Windows-based pod (elastic container instance) to run the containers.

Important

Windows-based instances are in invitational preview. To use Windows-based instances, submit a ticket.

Prerequisites

The version of the Virtual Kubelet component in the cluster is v2.11.0-rc.0 or later. The Virtual Kubelet component is the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) Virtual Node component. For more information, see Manage components and ACK Virtual Node.

Limits

When you create a Windows-based elastic container instance, the vCPU and memory specifications of the instance must be not smaller than 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory. The instance cannot be GPU-accelerated instances, instances that have local disks, or ARM-based instances.
The version of the Windows container image must be 10.0.20348.*. This means the container image must be a Windows Server 2022 image.

Add a Windows virtual node

You can modify the eci-profile to add a Windows virtual node to the cluster. Procedure:

Modify the eci-profile.

kubectl edit -n kube-system cm/eci-profile

Set enableWindowsAmd64Node to true in the data section of the eci-profile. Example:

data:
  ......
  enableWindowsAmd64Node: "true"   # Enable the Windows virtual node.
  ......

Check whether the Windows virtual node exists in the cluster.
```
kubectl get nodes -l kubernetes.io/os=windows
```
The following result is expected to return. Windows virtual nodes are automatically generated in the cluster.

Create a Windows-based pod

A Windows virtual node has a "kubernetes.io/os": windows label. When you create an Elastic Container Instance-based pod, you can use nodeSelector to specify a Windows virtual node and schedule the pod to run on the Windows virtual node. This way, you can create a Windows-based pod to run containers.

nodeSelector:
  kubernetes.io/os: windows

Sample YAML file:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: test-windows
  labels:
    app: test
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      name: nginx-test
      labels:
        app: nginx
        alibabacloud.com/eci: "true" 
      annotations:
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-with-eip: "true"              # Associate an elastic IP address (EIP) with the pod to pull images over the Internet.
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-use-specs: "ecs.c6.4xlarge"   # Specify an ECS instance type to create the pod.
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: test
        image: mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver:ltsc2022   # Use a Windows container image.
        command: ["ping","-t","localhost" ]
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: windows  # Schedule the pod to run on the Windows virtual node.