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Red Hat OpenShift support for Windows Containers overview

Red Hat OpenShift support for Windows Containers is a feature providing the ability to run Windows compute nodes in an OKD cluster. This is possible by using the Red Hat Windows Machine Config Operator (WMCO) to install and manage Windows nodes. With a Red Hat subscription, you can get support for running Windows workloads in OKD. Windows instances deployed by the WMCO are configured with the containerd container runtime. For more information, see the release notes.

You can add Windows nodes either by creating a compute machine set or by specifying existing Bring-Your-Own-Host (BYOH) Window instances through a configuration map.

Compute machine sets are not supported for bare metal or provider agnostic clusters.

For workloads including both Linux and Windows, OKD allows you to deploy Windows workloads running on Windows Server containers while also providing traditional Linux workloads hosted on Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) or Fedora. For more information, see getting started with Windows container workloads.

You need the WMCO to run Windows workloads in your cluster. The WMCO orchestrates the process of deploying and managing Windows workloads on a cluster. For more information, see how to enable Windows container workloads.

You can create a Windows MachineSet object to create infrastructure Windows machine sets and related machines so that you can move supported Windows workloads to the new Windows machines. You can create a Windows MachineSet object on multiple platforms.

You can schedule Windows workloads to Windows compute nodes.

You can perform Windows Machine Config Operator upgrades to ensure that your Windows nodes have the latest updates.

You can remove a Windows node by deleting a specific machine.

You can use Bring-Your-Own-Host (BYOH) Windows instances to repurpose Windows Server VMs and bring them to OKD. BYOH Windows instances benefit users who are looking to mitigate major disruptions in the event that a Windows server goes offline. You can use BYOH Windows instances as nodes on OKD 4.8 and later versions.

You can disable Windows container workloads by performing the following:

  • Uninstalling the Windows Machine Config Operator

  • Deleting the Windows Machine Config Operator namespace