To run containers with Actian Analytics Engine on Windows, you need a container engine/runtime that is capable of using Linux images. You can use Podman or Docker Desktop.

If you use Podman, it needs a Virtual Machine (VM) running Linux in the background. The VM must also be tuned appropriately for resources it will need to access, such as memory and CPU.

By default, Podman uses WSL2, but it can also use Hyper-V as the backend for the Linux VM. When considering either of the options, note that WSL2 offers a seamless integration with Windows and an almost transparent mount of local drives into the Linux VM. It does, however, need to have a session opened in the machine at all times.

Hyper-V, on the other hand, uses a driver (by default) which has limitations on writing to files and directories mounted from the localhost. If desired, Hyper-V can be easily configured to run headless.

The containers need read/write access to some of the directories that are mounted from the host when the container is created, that is, the log files, and to any specified user mount. The user is responsible for configuring the container runtime to provide this type of access.