Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and its Use cases

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FAUN — Developer Community 🐾

4 min readMay 22, 2021

Microsoft Azure is one of the foremost players in the cloud computing market presently. Kubernetes is by far the most popular container orchestration tool, yet the complexities of managing the tool have led to the rise of fully-managed Kubernetes services over the past few years.

AKS is an open-source fully managed container orchestration service that became available in June 2018 and is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud that can be used to deploy, scale, and manage Docker containers and container-based applications in a cluster environment. Azure Kubernetes Service offers provision, scaling, and upgrades of resources as per requirement or demand without any downtime in the Kubernetes cluster.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure, is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform. It provides a range of cloud services, including compute, analytics, storage, and networking. Users can pick and choose from these services to develop and scale new applications, or run existing applications in the public cloud.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for container orchestration. It allows developers and engineers to manage containerized workloads and services through both declarative configuration and automation.

Basic benefits of Kubernetes include:

Run distributed systems resiliently
Automatically mount a storage system
Automated rollouts and rollbacks
Self-healing
Secret and configuration management

What is Azure Kubernetes Service?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully-managed service that allows you to run Kubernetes in Azure without having to manage your own Kubernetes clusters. Azure manages all the complex parts of running Kubernetes, and you can focus on your containers. Basic features include:

Pay only for the nodes (VMs)
Easier cluster upgrades
Integrated with various Azure and OSS tools and services
Kubernetes RBAC and Azure Active Directory Integration
Enforce rules defined in Azure Policy across multiple clusters
Kubernetes can scale your Nodes using cluster autoscaler
Expand your scale even greater by scheduling your containers on Azure Container Instances

Azure Kubernetes Service Features

Security, Access, and Monitoring

Common Azure Kubernetes Service documentation can shed light on the improvements in areas of access, security, and monitoring. AKS helps in integration with Azure Active Directory and using Kubernetes role-based access controls. Also, you could monitor the status of your cluster and resources.

Clusters and Nodes

Azure Kubernetes Service tutorial also include elaborations on the feature of clusters and nodes in AKS. AKS nodes run on Azure Virtual Machines, and AKS provides support for Kubernetes clusters running multiple node pools. With the changes in demand for resources, the number of cluster nodes or pods running services can be scaled accordingly.

Development Tooling Integration

The next important concern in Azure Kubernetes Service is Development tooling integration. You can find a wide ecosystem having development and management tools such as Draft and Helm. The seamless functioning of these tools with AKS is a prolific reason to consider using AKS.

Use Cases of Azure Kubernetes Services

AKS is ideal for easy migration of the existing application to containers and running them.
AKS is also ideal for simplifying the deployment and management of applications based on microservices.
AKS is also a reliable instrument for bringing DevOps and Kubernetes together. AKS is ideal for secure DevOps implementation with Kubernetes and improves the speed and security of the development process.
Constant monitoring can also help in accelerating the feedback loop. Azure pipelines can help in faster delivery alongside compliance with critical policies specified by Azure.
Azure Kubernetes Service is also applicable in many other use cases. One of them is the ease of scaling by using AKS and Azure Container Instances. Also, you can find the applications of AKS for on-demand IoT device deployment and management.

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