Access Windows 2016 Server Container (Docker container) via GUI?

Question

I need to use Docker / Windows containers on Windows 2016 Server and prepare it Windows applications to run on it. Configuring Windows via Powershell just is not as convenient though as it is on Ubuntu, especially if you never worked with Windows Server really and need to learn all the Powershell commands ;)

Is there a way to access a Windows Container via GUI?

It's possible with Docker, Ubuntu, VNC: Can you run GUI apps in a docker container?

Wondering if anything similar can be done for Windows Containers?

(I am working on-premise, not using Azure. Found a similar but unanswered question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32721422/windows-server-containers-azure-how-to-create-a-container-with-gui)

Thanks.

== Update ==

RDP is definitely not an option as per February 2016 - not sure if they plan to support it in the final release?!

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/about/work_in_progress#remote-desktop

Remote Desktop

Windows Containers cannot be managed/interacted with through a RDP session in TP4.

So far I managed to have at least a decent file explorer by using Midnight Commander, but still command line on Windows is not much fun.

Zither

I do not see the sense and demand to have a GUI with containers. It's sort of the opposite you want to achieve. Learn PowerShell!!! – Rhineland

I find Powershell a bit uncomfortable compared to Linux shell. If I need a text editor, I do 'apt-get install nano' on Linux and I'm done. On PS I need to wget a zip from a remote url manually, unzip and then can finally use it. PS also seems to be quite slow ('dir' a list of a few hundred files). A GUI is not necessarily the opposite of what I want to achieve if I quickly want to add Windows features in order to use it as a base image. From that point on then I agree with you. No tail, no editor, all needs to be installed with manual effort. Maybe I'm wrong, haven't used PS much before. – Zither

I must admit that regarding speed you are right. I am still wondering in which cases line by line output is that slow. Did you recognize that using ISE is faster? – Rhineland

"dir" a folder list is one example but even more important: try Midnight Commander (sourceforge.net/projects/mcwin32) and use the cursor to navigate. It's really slow. You wait like half a second after each key press. Compare that to "mc" on Linux for example. You just feel that while Linux was naturally designed to be worked via command line, on Windows it's just treated like a second child. Yes, there is command line support, but it's so inconvenient. Why is there no apt-get? Why is there no text editor (like "edit" before), text viewer, etc. like vi/vim/nano available right away? – Zither

ISE: not yet, I will try it. – Zither

for my understanding powershell is a CLI to handle and pipe objects in an easy to use manner to automate tasks and get rid of a GUI. Remember that tools like mc are clones of norton commander and were invented on MSDOS. why do you need that interactive 80x25 GUI in Powershell? – Rhineland

Possible, I don't care about powershell so much if there were another (command line) tool to get the things done efficiently, if there were such tool. If Windows Server was meant to be managed to be handled via command line, most people would do that as on Linux, but it wasn't. I mean, why do most Windows Admins manage a Windows Server via GUI if it wasn't on a container, right? IMHO it's probably not as easy to use as it should be. (MC is not 80x25, it's full screen.) – Zither

The MC is not my point only, I am also talking about the package manager, available tools, tail, diff, vi, etc. Just simple tools that you expect in a shell that simply aren't there in that way. – Zither

that's a long story to explain GUI/shell usage on windows server. and there is a big transition in the last years towards shell. You can be pretty sure that most win admins have too low skills to do their work via shell... – Rhineland

Unfortunately you are probably right. I prefer shell in any way, I mislike GUIs as well, as long as it's just convenient to use please. But ok, I will look a bit more into Powershell and hopefully get used to it. – Zither

you consider powershell the same as a bash, which is completely wrong idea. bash and other unix shells are character or document based shells. therefor they need tail, vi etc. I really recommend to get a primer into the basic powershell concepts. the inventor of it, J.Snover is a really cool guy with unix background and he has made tons of nice tutorials in the MVA. check it – Rhineland

I opened a question regarding this performance topics in super user: superuser.com/questions/1047691/… – Rhineland

Powershell ISE already looks much better, unfortunately it does not seem to work with Docker/Containers. Getting errors when trying to run a docker container from there pastebin.com/DdsJVHvN – Zither

New question on SU: superuser.com/questions/1047738/… – Zither

Answer 1

in this video MS-container-developer Taylor Brown says that they break up with RDP from TP3 to TP4 and will very probably do not support RDP in RTM Version Server 2016:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechNetVirtualConference/TechNetVC2016/Day-3-Containers-Session-with-QA

Update as of Dez. 2018:

Server 2019 is out and RDP is still not possible / supported for all container images. (of course it does not make any sense for nano images)

check this nice intro to what has changed: https://stefanscherer.github.io/docker-on-windows-server-2019/

to have a somewhat complete overview, it should be mentioned that there are some hacks out in the wild, that may RDP make work in some images and setups, e.g.: https://withinrafael.com/2018/03/09/using-remote-desktop-services-in-containers/

Rhineland

Here's more comments from the team saying there will be no RDP support in Windows Server 2016: social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/… – Arelus

This video is two hours long - a time-range for this information would have been useful to me... – Financial

@Financial it became easier to google that statement recently. e.g. social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/… . furthermore the statement is right at the beginning at the video around 2-4 minutes – Rhineland