{"id":18135,"date":"2019-12-09T16:32:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/?p=18135"},"modified":"2019-12-10T16:42:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:42:44","slug":"improvements-in-windows-powershell-container-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/improvements-in-windows-powershell-container-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Improvements in Windows PowerShell Container Images"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Beginning with Windows Server 20H1 Insider builds, Windows Server Core Insider images have been reduced in size from ~2.1 GBs to ~1.1 GBs.<\/p>\n

<\/a>How did the Server Core images get over 40% smaller?<\/h2>\n

Traditionally, Windows 10 and Windows Server have always included a set of .NET native binaries that were pre-compiled using the Native Image Generator tool (Ngen.exe)<\/a>. This native pre-compilation makes these binaries faster on default installations of the OS, but it also makes the image size grow: managed\/IL .NET binaries are typically smaller and slower initially (until JIT compilation happens) than their native counterparts (with another tradeoff being that the latter are not portable between platforms and architectures).<\/p>\n

For more details, check out corresponding blogs published by the .NET team <\/a>and the Windows Server team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>What does this mean for me as a PowerShell user?<\/h2>\n

If you depend on Windows Server container images for usage of Windows PowerShell, and you value performance, you should switch from the windows\/servercore <\/a>images to the dotnet\/framework\/runtime<\/a> images. The latter are specifically optimized for .NET Framework workloads like Windows PowerShell.<\/p>\n

And in fact, switching to the new dotnet\/framework\/runtime<\/code> images will actually provide a greater benefit to startup performance even over the old windows\/servercore<\/code> images. When running Measure-Command { docker run --rm <image> powershell -c \"echo 1\" }<\/code> on a Windows box, observe the following differences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
windows\/servercore:1903<\/code><\/th>\nwindows\/servercore\/insider:10.0.19023.1<\/code><\/th>\ndotnet\/framework\/runtime:4.8-20191008-windowsservercore-1903<\/code><\/th>\ndotnet\/framework\/runtime:4.8-windowsservercore-2004<\/code><\/a><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
7.34 sec<\/td>\n5.41 sec<\/td>\n6.8 sec<\/td>\n3.76 sec<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>What if I’m using PowerShell Core instead of Windows PowerShell in my containers?<\/h2>\n

If have already moved your workloads from Windows PowerShell to PowerShell Core, you should continue to use the windowsservercore<\/code> images from microsoft\/powershell<\/a>, and when the Windows Server reductions graduate from Insiders you’ll simply enjoy the benefit of smaller image sizes.<\/p>\n

<\/a>That’s it!<\/h2>\n

Thanks to everyone leveraging PowerShell in Docker containers! And make sure to file any issues you have in our powershell-docker repository<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks,\nJoey Aiello\nProgram Manager, PowerShell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beginning with Windows Server 20H1 Insider builds, Windows Server Core Insider images have been reduced in size from ~2.1 GBs to ~1.1 GBs. How did the Server Core images get over 40% smaller? Traditionally, Windows 10 and Windows Server have always included a set of .NET native binaries that were pre-compiled using the Native Image […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Beginning with Windows Server 20H1 Insider builds, Windows Server Core Insider images have been reduced in size from ~2.1 GBs to ~1.1 GBs. How did the Server Core images get over 40% smaller? Traditionally, Windows 10 and Windows Server have always included a set of .NET native binaries that were pre-compiled using the Native Image […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}