Enabling Windows container workloads

Before adding Windows workloads to your cluster, you must install the Windows Machine Config Operator (WMCO), which is available in the {product-title} OperatorHub. The WMCO orchestrates the process of deploying and managing Windows workloads on a cluster.

Note	Dual NIC is not supported on WMCO-managed Windows instances.

Prerequisites

You have access to an {product-title} cluster using an account with cluster-admin permissions.
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).
You have installed your cluster using installer-provisioned infrastructure, or using user-provisioned infrastructure with the platform: none field set in your install-config.yaml file.
You have configured hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes for your cluster. For more information, see Configuring hybrid networking.
You are running an {product-title} cluster version 4.6.8 or later.

Note	Windows instances deployed by the WMCO are configured with the containerd container runtime. Because WMCO installs and manages the runtime, it is recommended that you do not manually install containerd on nodes.

Additional resources

For the comprehensive prerequisites for the Windows Machine Config Operator, see Windows Machine Config Operator prerequisites.

Installing the Windows Machine Config Operator

You can install the Windows Machine Config Operator using either the web console or OpenShift CLI (oc).

Note	Due to a limitation within the Windows operating system, `clusterNetwork` CIDR addresses of class E, such as `240.0.0.0`, are not compatible with Windows nodes.