Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Ship faster, operate with ease, and scale confidently

Deploy and manage containerized applications more easily with a fully managed Kubernetes service. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. Unite your development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.

Elastic provisioning of capacity without the need to manage the infrastructure, and with the ability to add event-driven autoscaling and triggers through KEDA

Faster end-to-end development experience through Visual Studio Code Kubernetes tools, Azure DevOps, and Azure Monitor

Most comprehensive authentication and authorization capabilities using Azure Active Directory, and dynamic rules enforcement across multiple clusters with Azure Policy

Available in more regions than any other cloud provider

Accelerate containerized application development

Easily define, deploy, debug, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes applications, and automatically containerize your applications. Use modern application development to accelerate time to market.

Add a full CI/CD pipeline to your AKS clusters with automated routine tasks, and set up a canary deployment strategy in just a few clicks. Detect failures early and optimize your pipelines with deep traceability into your deployments.

Gain visibility into your environment with the Kubernetes resources view, control-plane telemetry, log aggregation, and container health, accessible in the Azure portal and automatically configured for AKS clusters.

Review DevOps fundamentals

Increased operational efficiency

Rely on built-in automated provisioning, repair, monitoring, and scaling. Get up and running quickly and minimize infrastructure maintenance.

Easily provision fully managed clusters with Prometheus based monitoring capabilities.
Use Azure Advisor to optimize your Kubernetes deployments with real-time, personalized recommendations.
Save on costs by using deeply discounted capacity with Azure Spot.
Elastically add compute capacity with serverless Kubernetes, in seconds.
Achieve higher availability and protect applications from datacenter failures using availability zones.

Learn about cost saving strategies

Build on an enterprise-grade, more secure foundation

Dynamically enforce guardrails defined in Azure Policy at deployment or in CI/CD workflows. Deploy only validated images to your private container registry.
Get fine-grained identity and access control to Kubernetes resources using Azure Active Directory.
Enforce pod security context and configure across multiple clusters with Azure Policy. Track, validate, reconfigure, and get compliance reports easily.
Achieve superior security with a hardened operating system image, automated patching, and more. Automate threat detection and remediation using Azure Security Center.
Use Azure Private Link to limit Kubernetes API server access to your virtual network. Use network policy to secure your communication paths.

Get the definitive guide to securing Kubernetes

Run any workload in the cloud, at the edge, or as a hybrid

Orchestrate any type of workload running in the environment of your choice. Whether you want to move .NET applications to Windows Server containers, modernize Java applications in Linux containers, or run microservices applications in the public cloud, at the edge, or in hybrid environments, Azure has the solution for you.

Learn about the Kubernetes core concepts and apply best practices in production.

Common uses for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Migrate your existing application to the cloud, build a complex application that uses machine learning, or take advantage of the agility offered by a microservices architecture.

Lift and shift to containers with AKS

Easily migrate existing application to container(s) and run within the Azure managed Kubernetes service (AKS).

Microservices with AKS

Use AKS to simplify the deployment and management of microservices based architecture. AKS streamlines horizontal scaling, self-healing, load balancing, secret management.

Secure DevOps for AKS

DevOps and Kubernetes are better together. Implementing secure DevOps together with Kubernetes on Azure, you can achieve the balance between speed and security and deliver code faster at scale.

Bursting from AKS with ACI

Use the AKS virtual node to provision pods inside ACI that start in seconds. This enables AKS to run with just enough capacity for your average workload.

Azure IoT reference architecture

This reference architecture shows a recommended architecture for IoT applications on Azure using PaaS (platform-as-a-service) components.

Machine Learning model training with AKS

Training of models using large datasets is a complex and resource intensive task. Use familiar tools such as TensorFlow and Kubeflow to simplify training of Machine Learning models.

Data Streaming scenario

Use AKS to easily ingest & process a real-time data stream with millions of data points collected via sensors. Perform fast analysis and computations to develop insights into complex scenarios quickly.

Use AKS and pay only for compute resources

Pay only for the virtual machines and the associated storage and networking resources consumed
Take advantage of no-charge cluster management

See AKS pricing

How customers are using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Hafslund uses containerized software for utility initiatives and to improve customer service

"We wanted a platform to speed development and testing but do it safely, without losing control over security and performance. That's why Azure and AKS are the perfect fit for us."

Ståle Heitmann, Chief Technology Officer, Hafslund Nett

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Maersk uses the cloud to spur development of containerized solutions built on Kubernetes

"Using Kubernetes on Azure satisfies our objectives for efficient software development. It aligns well with our digital plans and our choice of open-source solutions."

Rasmus Hald, Head of Cloud Architecture, A.P. Moller - Maersk

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Siemens Healthineers moves more computing to the cloud to support value-based care development

"Using AKS puts us into a position to not only deploy our business logic in Docker containers, including the orchestration, but also … to easily manage the exposure and control."

Thomas Gossler, Lead Architect, Digital Ecosystem Platform, Siemens Healthineers

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Finastra chooses AKS for its next-generation financial technology development ecosystem

"AKS gives us a pure Kubernetes and Docker imaging environment that we don't have to manage ourselves. Our team has regained the resources to accelerate deployment and maximize our PaaS offering."

Félix Grévy, Global Head of Product Management, Finastra

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Bosch increases vehicle safety using map-matching algorithms and Azure Kubernetes Service

"When we started our journey on Azure, we were a really small team—just one or two developers. Our partnership with Microsoft, the support from their advisory teams, the great AKS documentation and enterprise expertise—it all helped us very much to succeed."

Bernhard Rode, Software Engineer, Bosch

Read the story

Get started with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Sign up for an Azure free account.

Explore the core Kubernetes infrastructure components and workload resources.

Follow the seven-part tutorial to deploy and run an application in AKS.

Training materials and resources

What is Kubernetes?

Get an overview of Kubernetes and related resources, including a Kubernetes learning path designed to facilitate your journey to Kubernetes proficiency. Learn from experts through e-books, videos, short tutorials, and in-depth, hands-on workshops.

Documentation and quickstarts

Check out the documentation for quickstarts, tutorials, and how-to guides. Read AKS best practices to better understand the technical details, get hands-on with AKS, and learn about the options for setting up Kubernetes in production.

Videos and webinars

Watch AKS videos and on-demand Azure webinars for demos, top features, and technical sessions.

Azure Blog and updates

Read the Blog and subscribe to updates for the latest news and information on Azure products.

Forums and events

Deepen your expertise by joining other AKS users on GitHub, at KubeCon, or at a Kubernetes Meetup near you.

E-books

AKS production baseline

Get recommendations for networking, security, identity, management, and monitoring of the cluster based on your organization’s business requirements.

Expert guidance

Join AKS office hours for expert guidance, new feature showcase, future roadmap discussion, and a Q&A session.

AKS updates, blogs, and announcements

Frequently asked questions about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

AKS is available in more than 42 regions worldwide, and new ones are being added regularly.
Kubernetes is open-source software that helps deploy and manage containerized applications at scale. It orchestrates a cluster of Azure virtual machines, schedules containers, automatically manages service discovery, incorporates load balancing, and tracks resource allocation. It also checks the health of individual resources and heals apps with auto-restart and auto-replication.

AKS provides a managed Kubernetes service with automated provisioning, upgrading, monitoring, and on-demand scaling. To learn more, visit the Kubernetes website and the topic page.
Docker and Kubernetes are complementary. Docker provides an open standard for packaging and distributing containerized applications, while Kubernetes provides for the orchestration and management of distributed, containerized applications created with Docker. In other words, Kubernetes provides the infrastructure needed to deploy and run applications built with Docker.

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