Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Easily provision clusters via the Azure portal and Azure CLI, or with infrastructure as code tools such as Azure Resources Manager and Terraform. Simplify cluster maintenance with automated upgrades and scaling. And gain operational visibility into your managed Kubernetes environment with control plane telemetry, log aggregation, and container health visible as part of the Azure portal, automatically configured for AKS clusters.

Meet growing demands with built-in application autoscaling. Deploy your containerized applications globally on AKS, taking advantage of Azure datacenters. Boost application performance by routing traffic to the closest region using Azure Traffic Manager. With the Virtual Kubelet support (preview), use Azure Container Instances to elastically burst from your AKS cluster when traffic comes in spikes.

Control access to your Kubernetes cluster with Azure Active Directory accounts and user groups. For fine-grained control over Kubernetes resources, integrate Azure Active Directory with Kubernetes role-based access controls. Safeguard cryptographic keys and other secrets used by Kubernetes master and agent nodes with Key Vault. Secure your container network communication with custom virtual networks, Azure Container Network Interface (CNI) , and network policy enforcement.

Easily define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes applications using Helm. Automatically scaffold and containerize your applications and deploy to an AKS cluster using Azure CLI or the point-and-click publishing feature in Visual Studio. Rapidly iterate, test, and debug your containers using Azure Dev Spaces for AKS. Deploy apps in seconds with built-in HTTP routing.

AKS is 100-percent open-source Kubernetes, enabling you to take full advantage of the services and tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem. Use popular open-source tools like Helm, Draft, and Brigade to automate your software delivery pipeline. Easily integrate Kubernetes with SLA-backed Azure Services, such as CosmosDB, using the Open Service Broker for Azure.

With Azure DevOps Project (Preview), you can install an application into Kubernetes with a full CI/CD pipeline and app telemetry in just three steps. Use Azure Container Registry to simplify container development and manage a single registry replicated across multiple regions. Geo-replication from Azure Container Registry enables you to manage global deployments as one entity to simplify operations and management.