Containers on Azure

Wherever you are in your app modernization journey, accelerate your containerized application development while meeting your security requirements.

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Accelerate app development with containers

Decrease costs

Lower costs by migrating existing apps to containers and build microservices apps to deliver value to users faster.

Get end-to-end tooling

Develop, update, and deploy your containerized applications using end-to-end developer and CI/CD tools.

Manage at scale

Scale container management and orchestration with managed Kubernetes or serverless containers to meet your needs.

Build with AI

Build and deploy containerized AI applications with ease using Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and other Azure AI services.

PRODUCTS

Explore container services

Resources

Get started with containers

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AKS

Learn how to deploy containers using Azure Kubernetes Service

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Azure Container Apps

Learn how to deploy cloud-native apps using Azure Container Apps

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Functions

Learn how to implement Azure Functions

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FAQ

Azure provides several container-related services. These include Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Container Apps, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Azure Container Registry, and Azure Container Storage.
While Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Apps are both services for running containerized applications on Azure, they have different use cases.

AKS is a managed Kubernetes service that provides direct access to the Kubernetes APIs with more control and flexibility for managing Kubernetes clusters. It requires understanding of Kubernetes and is suitable for advanced scenarios, such as hybrid and multicloud deployments or where direct access to Kubernetes API is required.

Azure Container Apps offers a serverless, fully managed environment that supports event-driven architecture, automatic scaling, and scale to zero. It’s ideal for developers who don’t want to interact with Kubernetes and want to focus on building and deploying applications without managing infrastructure.

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Azure Container Apps and Azure Container Instances are both services for running containers on Azure, but they serve different purposes.

Azure Container Apps offers a serverless, fully managed environment that supports event-driven architecture, automatic scaling, and scale to zero. It’s ideal for applications that need to scale based on demand and handle complex microservice architectures easily.

Azure Container Instances provides a lower-level building block option for running containers. It allows you to run containers without managing servers but lacks advanced features like scaling and load balancing. It’s ideal for running isolated containers quickly and efficiently in transient scenarios and isn’t intended for enterprise-grade backends.

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Azure provides monthly free amounts for several services for the first 12 months, and some services are always free. For example:
AKS cluster management is always free, but you incur a charge for resources consumed by nodes.
Azure Container Apps is free for up to 180,000 vCPU seconds, 360,000 GiB seconds, and 2 million requests.
Azure Container Registry is free for the first 12 months and up to 1 Standard tier registry with 100 GB storage and 10 webhooks.
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