Today, I’m excited to announce the general availability of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic, delivering Kubernetes that’s already configured, optimized, and ready to run—right out of the box. AKS Automatic accelerates app delivery with automation, simplifies Kubernetes operations through intelligent defaults, and enables secure, compliant workloads optimized for AI and cloud-native use cases. AKS Automatic will set the standard for a simplified Kubernetes experience.
Instead of wrestling with setup and operations, teams go from commit to cloud without friction, accelerating delivery and unleashing innovation. AKS Automatic is the perfect balance between simplification and flexibility. By removing the complexity of Kubernetes infrastructure, it empowers teams to focus on building and running applications, while still preserving the extensibility and openness you expect from Kubernetes.
AKS powers mission-critical workloads for some of the world’s most forward-thinking organizations, including OpenAI, BMW, Hexagon, McDonald’s, and the NBA. Across industries, enterprises are leveraging AKS to scale securely and accelerate innovation. AKS Automatic builds on this trusted foundation to make Kubernetes faster, simpler, and more secure for every team.
Removing the “Kubernetes tax”
Even for the most advanced Kubernetes users, the power of the platform can often come with operational overhead. AKS Automatic was built to remove those barriers by:
- Lowering the learning curve for new Kubernetes users. “Easy mode” clusters with best-practice defaults and guardrails simplify configuration and operations, while ensuring every app deployed on AKS has the performance, reliability, and security it requires. Even first-time Kubernetes users can have a reliable cluster up and running, fast.
- Freeing up resources and reducing operational overhead. Running Kubernetes traditionally can mean maintaining the control plane, tuning node pools, patching systems, handling upgrades, and scaling–all tasks that can consume considerable time and resources. AKS Automatic offloads these day-two operations to Azure, managing your cluster’s infrastructure (node provisioning, scaling, maintenance, and repairs) automatically–freeing your team up to focus on other things.
- Mitigating security and reliability risks from misconfiguration. Kubernetes flexibility can be a double-edged sword–a small mistake in setup can expose security vulnerabilities or undermine reliability. AKS Automatic clusters come secure and production-ready right out –of –the box. They enforce a hardened default configuration and Azure continuously patches and monitors cluster components to keep them up to date. This means a stronger security posture and resilient operations without extra effort.
From container image to deployed application in minutes, AKS Automatic streamlines the entire Kubernetes experience. With intelligent defaults, simplified cluster operations, and proactive security built in, teams are freed up to focus on building and running applications, instead of managing infrastructure.
The AKS Automatic PoC has helped our Enterprise Tooling Platform significantly reduce operational overhead. By streamlining deployment and management, it allowed us to focus more on apps and tools workloads rather than infrastructure. We’re now planning to adopt AKS Automatic as our ETP microservices and hosting platform for production.
—Swamy Asha, Solution Engineer at Royal Mail Group
What AKS Automatic delivers
AKS Automatic simplifies Kubernetes by offering a fully managed, opinionated experience that abstracts away from infrastructure complexity, while keeping the full power of Kubernetes at your fingertips. In practical terms, when you create an AKS Automatic cluster, you get:
One-click, production-ready clusters. Spin up a production-grade cluster in minutes. Azure handles node setup, networking, and integrations using best practices—no upfront decisions required. Defaults like Azure Container Networking Interface (CNI) and Azure Linux nodes are preselected, so you’re ready to deploy immediately.
Intelligent autoscaling without manual tuning. AKS Automatic enables dynamic scaling for both pods and nodes using Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA), and KEDA for event-driven scaling–all enabled out –of –the box. It also introduces automated node provisioning via Karpenter, an open-source Kubernetes autoscaler that dynamically scales your cluster up or down based on real-time demand—no manual configuration needed.
Built-in best practices for security and reliability. Every AKS Automatic cluster is production-ready by default. This means security and reliability features are baked in from the start. You get Microsoft Entra ID integration for authentication, role-based access control, and network policies without extra setup. Node images are patched automatically, and Azure Monitor is preconfigured for logs and metrics. Deployment safeguards help prevent misconfigurations that could impact uptime, while automatic node repairs and built-in scaling ensure your workloads run reliably. This means you get a stable, secure cluster on day one.
Azure’s application platform delivers flexibility in how customers want to scale AI Apps and agents in production, from AKS to Azure Container Apps and Azure App Service. AKS Automatic strengthens Azure’s position by making Kubernetes simpler for all teams, accelerating deployment of AI applications and agents and seamlessly integrating with Azure’s ecosystem of services and developer tools.
Kubernetes continues to draw massive interest from customers building new AI applications and agents, as well as those modernizing existing applications and deploying at scale. Even more, we’ve embedded Microsoft’s expertise running Kubernetes at scale – underpinning Microsoft Teams, M365, Xbox Live and more – directly in AKS Automatic configurations to enhance security, scalability, and performance.
Developer-friendly and fully extensible Kubernetes. While AKS Automatic handles infrastructure, it keeps the experience familiar for developers and platform engineers. You still get the full Kubernetes API, kubectl, and your existing tools all work as expected. AKS Automatic integrates with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions), enabling fast, repeatable deployments. If you need to customize something or use a specific Kubernetes feature, you still have the full power of Kubernetes at your fingertips.
A platform optimized for AI and cloud-native workloads. AKS Automatic is purpose-built to support the demands of modern applications, including AI, ML, and cloud-native services. It offers GPU support, intelligent workload placement, and dynamic resource allocation to handle compute-intensive tasks like model training and inference.
Open-source alignment. Importantly, none of this comes at the expense of control or openness. AKS Automatic is built on upstream open-source Kubernetes, and it remains 100% conformant with CNCF standards (just like AKS Standard). It leverages open-source projects like KEDA and Karpenter, staying true to the Kubernetes community while delivering a managed experience.
Benefits for startups and enterprises alike
One of the unique aspects of AKS Automatic is that it’s designed to be valuable to a wide range of customers.
For lean teams and startups, it makes Kubernetes feasible even without dedicated DevOps or platform engineers. You get a “it just works” Kubernetes cluster where a lot of the tricky parts (like scaling, security, upgrades) are handled for you. This means a small team can leverage the power of Kubernetes–flexibility, portability, scaling–without getting bogged down in operations. As your needs grow, you still have all the capabilities of Kubernetes available.
For enterprise IT and platform teams, AKS Automatic offers consistency and efficiency at scale. Enterprise platform teams can provide AKS Automatic clusters as a self-service option to internal groups, and have confidence that those clusters will be secure and well-managed out of the box. It frees up experienced Kubernetes operators to focus on higher-value architecture decisions rather than routine cluster maintenance. And because it’s still AKS, it integrates with enterprise tools like Azure Arc, Azure Monitor, and company-wide policies just as well as standard AKS does.
In both cases, the outcome is the same: teams can spend more time on their applications and business logic, and less time on Kubernetes itself. AKS Automatic removes much of the undifferentiated heavy lifting that came with Kubernetes, which means more developer productivity and operational peace of mind.
Get started with AKS Automatic
Getting started is as easy as selecting the “Automatic” option when you create a new AKS cluster. In the Azure Portal, you’ll find a toggle or SKU selection for AKS Automatic during provisioning. With Azure CLI, you can enable it by specifying tier Automatic when creating a cluster. There’s no separate product or new API–it’s the AKS you know, with a new managed mode.
If you’re interested in learning more or trying it out:
- Ready to start focusing on innovation instead of infrastructure? Join us live today for the global virtual launch event of AKS Automatic (or catch the recap)!
- Check out the documentation and quickstarts. We have updated guides on Microsoft Learn, such as “Introduction to AKS Automatic” which covers how it works, and a quickstart for deploying an app to an AKS Automatic cluster from a GitHub repository (using our automated CI/CD integration). These resources walk you through the experience step by step.
- Try converting a test workload. A great way to evaluate AKS Automatic is to take a non-critical workload or a dev/test environment you have on a standard AKS cluster and deploy it to a new AKS Automatic cluster. You’ll quickly notice the differences in what you don’t have to do (no manual node management, etc.), and you can observe the autoscaling in action by putting some load on it. Since the Kubernetes API is the same, migrating an app is usually straightforward – often it’s as simple as pointing your kubectl context to the new cluster and re-applying your manifests or Helm charts.
- Join the community conversation. We’re eager to hear from you–what works well, what could be better, and what features you’d like to see next. Kubernetes at scale is a journey, and GA is a milestone, not the end. As we move forward, we’ll continue to enhance AKS Automatic, guided heavily by user input. Connect with our team on our Monthly Community Calls or on our GitHub.
Our team is thrilled to make AKS Automatic generally available and can’t wait to see how you use it. Whether you’re a startup founder looking to scale your app without hiring an ops team, or an enterprise architect aiming to standardize and simplify your company’s Kubernetes footprint, we believe AKS Automatic will help you achieve more with less hassle. It’s Kubernetes, minus the complexity. We invite you to try it out and let us know what you think–and we look forward to a new wave of cloud-native innovation that AKS Automatic will help unlock.