As of right now, Windows Server 2016 is ready to run on Amazon EC2. This new version of Windows Server 2016 comes with a few new features, like support for Docker and Windows Containers, and does quite a bit to expand the possibilities on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. This new version of Windows Server 2016 is made available to us in four different forms:
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Windows Server 2016 Datacenter with Desktop Experience – The mainstream version of Windows Server, designed with security and scalability in mind, with support for both traditional and cloud-native applications. To learn a lot more about Windows Server 2016, download The Ultimate Guide to Windows Server 2016 (registration required).
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Windows Server 2016 Nano Server -A cloud-native, minimal install that takes up a modest amount of disk space and boots more swiftly than the Datacenter version, while leaving more system resources (memory, storage, and CPU) available to run apps and services. You can read Moving to Nano Server to learn how to migrate your code and your applications. Nano Server does not include a desktop UI so you’ll need to administer it remotely using PowerShell or WMI. To learn how to do this, read Connecting to a Windows Server 2016 Nano Server Instance.
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Windows Server 2016 with Containers – Windows Server 2016 with Windows containers and Docker already installed.
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Windows Server 2016 with SQL Server 2016 – Windows Server 2016 with SQL Server 2016 already installed.
Be sure to check out Amazon’s full blog post to get a few tips on how to work with this new update, as well as a few screenshots that show it in action. It’s also important to note that the blog post states that Amazon plans to bring Windows container support to ECS by the end of the year.
