Kind: Support Windows "nodes" (not hosts, which are supported)

[cyriltovena]

Since 1.14 Kubernetes provides stable windows nodes. It would be great to be able to run also windows nodes on KIND allowing fast development and testing for windows containers.

Possible implementation

Obviously as of today only windows support both linux and windows containers so this feature should only be focused for the windows version of KIND.

Since LCOW you can run both windows and linux container at the same time so LCOW should be required.

• Via the config file we should be able to select the node os
• We should also provide a windows node image.

[neolit123]

the first prerequisite would be that kubeadm has to support Windows nodes propertly:
https://github.com/kubernetes/kubeadm/issues/1393

we have this tracked for 1.15, but some help from SIG Windows will be required.

/priority backlog
/kind feature

[BenTheElder]

Another issue is that our CI is not Windows capable currently, and the images would have to be built from Windows.

As-is our Windows-as-a-host support is mainly trying hard not to break it (due to resources). I think @neolit123 is the only active contributor working from Windows. I occasionally test from a personal machine.

Last I checked the kernel version compatibility issue would make this tricky to ship to desktop users: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/deploy-containers/version-compatibility

I wouldn't say this won't happen, I certainly understand how it might be useful, but I don't think it is likely to happen _soon_ given that even kubeadm isnt supported yet, Windows will need more support first.

It looks like minikube doesn't have any plans for this yet either 🤔

[cyriltovena]

I'm fine with that just putting this out there basically.

Le mer. 27 mars 2019 à 11:20, Benjamin Elder [e-mail] a
écrit :

Another issue is that our CI is not Windows capable currently, and the
images would have to be built from Windows.

As-is our Windows-as-a-host support is mainly trying hard not to break it
(due to resources). I think @neolit123 https://github.com/neolit123 is
the only active contributor working from Windows. I occasionally test from
a personal machine.

Last I checked the kernel version compatibility issue would make this
tricky to ship to desktop users:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/deploy-containers/version-compatibility

I wouldn't say this won't happen, I certainly understand how it might be
useful, but I don't think it is likely to happen soon given that even
kubeadm isnt supported yet, Windows will need more support first.

It looks like minikube doesn't have any plans for this yet either 🤔

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Cyril Tovena

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[BenTheElder]

Forgot to update this, I think it might not actually be possible (to run CRI in a windows container) currently per @PatrickLang

[neolit123]

would it be easier to get docker on the nodes working?
(probably not)

[BenTheElder]

Er no, to clarify, I'm using CRI as shorthand for container runtimes in general. I haven't tried myself yet but my understanding from Patrick is that you can't nest them at all in Windows containers (which are a bit different from linux containers...)

[neolit123]

i see. so this means we cannot have kind creating Windows node images.
which is quite the blocker, until further notice.

[BenTheElder]

if we can confirm it is infeasible, we should just close this and come back at some future date if that changes... otherwise, freezing.

[BenTheElder]

AFAICT this is not possible. Linux containers on a linux "node" can run on windows in various ways, but a windows "node" container is not possible at the moment.

[BenTheElder]

We will come back to this if / when it becomes possible