Why azure takes so long to create an windows core server container instance?

Question

Recently started to look into azure container instance for windows preview. When creating a container from images ( "microsoft/iis" or "microsoft/windowsservercore" ) azure taking 10-12 minutes to make its ProvisioningState to Succeeded.

Just wanted to confirm will this remain same in future or it will improve as we are betting high on ACI for processing small duration workloads.

I have created container instance with PowerShell as well as from Azure portal itself.

Answer 1

The startup time for a container in Azure Container Instances is mostly a function of the size of the container image that you're deploying, since we need to pull and extract the image in order to start it. The Windows Server Core image is currently 5GB, so it will take some time to pull and extract it in ACI. Smaller images, such as those based on Nanoserver will start much faster.