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

Advanced identity and access management 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.

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. This checkbox-like experience helps you get up and running quickly and minimizes infrastructure maintenance.

Easily provision fully managed clusters with automatically configured monitoring capabilities based on Prometheus.
Use Azure Advisor to optimize your Kubernetes deployments with real-time, personalized recommendations based on our knowledge from working with thousands of enterprise customers. Save on costs by using deeply discounted capacity with Azure Spot.
Elastically add compute capacity with serverless Kubernetes, in seconds, without worrying about managing the infrastructure.
Achieve higher availability and protect applications from datacenter failures by using redundancies across availability zones.

Learn about cost saving strategies

Build on an enterprise-grade, more secure foundation

Get the definitive guide to securing Kubernetes

Learn more about Azure Policy

Learn more about Security Center

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.

Overview

Flow

Overview

Easily migrate an application to container(s) and run it within AKS. Control access via integration with Azure Active Directory and access SLA-backed Azure services, such as Azure Database for MySQL, using Open Service Broker for Azure for your data needs.

Flow

1 Convert your application to container(s) and publish container image(s) to Azure Container Registry.

2 Using Azure Portal or command line, user deploys containers to AKS cluster.

3 Use Azure Active Directory to control access to AKS resources.

4 Easily access SLA-backed Azure services, such as Azure Database for MySQL, using Open Service Broker for Azure.

5 Optionally, deploy AKS with a VNET virtual network.

Learn more
Overview

Flow

Overview

Use AKS to streamline horizontal scaling, self-healing, load balancing, and secret management.

Flow

1 Use an IDE, such as Visual Studio, to commit changes to GitHub.

2 GitHub triggers a new build on Azure DevOps

3 Azure DevOps packages microservices as containers and pushes them to the Azure Container Registry

4 Containers are deployed to AKS cluster

5 Azure Active Directory is used to secure access to the resources

6 Users access services via apps and websites

7 Administrators access the apps via a separate admin portal

8 Microservices use databases to store and retrieve information

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Overview

Flow

Overview

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. Put guardrails around the development processes using CI/CD with dynamic policy controls, and accelerate feedback loop with constant monitoring. Use Azure Pipelines to deliver fast while ensuring enforcement of critical policies with Azure Policy. Azure provides you real-time observability for your build and release pipelines, and the ability to apply compliance audit and reconfigurations.

Flow

1 Rapidly iterate, test, and debug different parts of an application together in the same Kubernetes cluster

2 Code is merged into a GitHub repository, after which automated builds and tests are run by Azure Pipelines

3 The container image is registered in Azure Container Registry

4 Kubernetes clusters are provisioned using tools like Terraform; Helm charts, installed by Terraform, define the desired state of app resources and configurations

5 Operators enforce policies to govern deployments to the AKS cluster

6 The release pipeline automatically executes a pre-defined deployment strategy with each code change

7 Policy enforcement and auditing is added to CI/CD pipeline using Azure Policy

8 App telemetry, container health monitoring, and real-time log analytics are obtained using Azure Monitor

9 Insights are used to address issues and fed into next sprint plans

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Overview

Flow

Overview

Use the AKS virtual node to provision pods inside Azure Container Instances that start in seconds. This enables AKS to run with just enough capacity for your average workload. As you run out of capacity in your AKS cluster, scale out additional pods in Azure Container Instances without additional servers to manage.

Flow

1 Register your container in Azure Container Registry

2 Container images are pulled from Azure Container Registry

3 AKS virtual node, a Virtual Kubelet implementation, provisions pods inside Azure Container Instances from AKS when traffic comes in spikes

4 AKS and Azure Container Instances containers write to a shared data store

Learn more

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Overview

Flow

Overview

IoT scenarios potentially involve hundreds to thousands of IoT devices. AKS provides scalable compute resources on demand for IoT solutions, running in the cloud or on-premises.

Flow

1 Initiates AKS deployment using a Helm Chart

2 An IoT Edge connector virtual node deploys to edge devices via IoT Hub

3 Deployment is updated on Edge devices

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Overview

Flow

Overview

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. Your models will run in AKS clusters backed by GPU-enabled virtual machines.

Flow

1 Initiate AKS deployment using a Helm Chart

2 An IoT Edge connector virtual node deploys to edge devices via IoT Hub

3 Deployment is updated on edge devices

Learn more

Download the PDF
Overview

Flow

Overview

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

Flow

1 Sensor data is generated and streamed to Azure API Management

2 The AKS cluster runs microservice that are deployed as containers behind a service mesh. Containers are built using a DevOps process and stored in Azure Container Registry

3 Ingest service stores data in a Azure Cosmos DB

4 Asynchronously, the Analysis service receives the data and streams it to Apache Kafka and Azure HDInsight

5 Data scientists can analyze the big data for use in machine learning models, using Splunk

6 Data is processed by the processing service, which stores the result in Azure Database for PostgreSQL and caches the data in an Azure Cache for Redis

7 A web app running in Azure App Service is used to visualize the results

Learn more

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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 updates, blogs, and announcements

Frequently asked questions about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

AKS is available in more than 39 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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