Use LISA docker image on Windows

This guide will walk you through using the LISA Docker image on a Windows system.

Quick Start with quick-container.ps1 (Recommended)

The quick-container.ps1 script handles everything automatically — including installing Docker CE if it is not already installed. No need to install Docker Desktop or any other tools beforehand.

Download the script (run PowerShell as Administrator):

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/lisa/main/installers/quick-container.ps1" -OutFile "quick-container.ps1"

Install Docker CE and launch an interactive container:

.\quick-container.ps1 -InstallDocker -Interactive

Run LISA with an Azure subscription:

$token = az account get-access-token --query accessToken -o tsv
.\quick-container.ps1 -InstallDocker -Runbook lisa/microsoft/runbook/azure.yml `
    -SubscriptionId YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID -Token $token

Note

The -InstallDocker flag is only needed the first time. On subsequent runs, you can omit it — the script will detect that Docker is already installed.

Manual Docker Setup

If you prefer to install Docker yourself, you can use Docker Desktop or Docker CE, then run containers directly.

Install Docker Desktop on Windows

You can download Docker Desktop from the Docker website.

Start Docker service

After installing Docker, open the Docker Desktop application to start the Docker service. Or use the following command to launch and start the Docker service.

Start-Process "C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\Docker Desktop.exe"

Launch LISA container

Use below command to launch the LISA container.

docker run --rm -i mcr.microsoft.com/lisa/runtime:latest lisa -r ./examples/runbook/hello_world.yml

Mount local files into the container

To override files inside the container (e.g., for testing a code fix), use the -v flag to mount a local directory into the container.

Important

Windows containers only support mounting directories, not individual files. Mount the parent directory instead.

# Mount local lisa\util directory to override container files
docker run --rm -i `
    -v C:\code\lisa\lisa\util:C:\app\lisa\lisa\util `
    mcr.microsoft.com/lisa/runtime:latest `
    lisa -r ./examples/runbook/hello_world.yml

If using quick-container.ps1, pass the mount via -ExtraArgs:

.\quick-container.ps1 -Runbook lisa/microsoft/runbook/azure.yml `
    -SubscriptionId xxx -Token $token `
    -ExtraArgs "-v C:\code\lisa\lisa\util:C:\app\lisa\lisa\util"