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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Highly available, secure, and fully managed Kubernetes service

Ship faster, operate with ease, and scale confidently

The fully managed Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) makes deploying and managing containerized applications easy. It 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.

New to Kubernetes? Get an overview of Kubernetes basics and learn more about how it works. Click here

Elastic provisioning of additional capacity without the need to manage the infrastructure

Faster end-to-end development experience and integration with 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

Orchestration of containers across 24 regions and growing, in the public cloud, in Azure Stack, or on IoT edge devices

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 control-plane telemetry, log aggregation, and container health, accessible in the Azure portal and automatically configured for AKS clusters.

Manage Kubernetes with ease

Easily provision clusters using the CLI or infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform. Minimize infrastructure maintenance using automated upgrades, repair, monitoring, and scaling.

Elastically provision additional compute capacity in serverless Kubernetes in seconds without worrying about managing the infrastructure.

Simplify cluster maintenance with automated patching, upgrades and scaling.

Build on an enterprise-grade, more secure foundation

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 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.

Learn about Microsoft's contribution to the Kubernetes community.

Learn more

Common uses for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Use Kubernetes to 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.

  • Easily migrate existing applicationEasily migrate existing application12345
    1. Overview
    2. Flow

    Overview

    Easily migrate existing application to container(s) and run within the Azure managed Kubernetes service (AKS). Control access via integration with AzureActive Directory and access SLA-backed Azure Services such as Azure Databasefor MySQL using OSBA (Opensource Broker for Azure) for your data needs.

    Flow

    1. 1 User converts existing application to container(s) & publishes container image(s)to the Azure Container Registry
    2. 2 Using Azure Portal or command line, user deploys containers to AKS cluster
    3. 3 Azure Active Directory is used to control access to AKS resources
    4. 4 Easily access SLA-backed Azure Services such as Azure Database for MySQL usingOSBA (Opensource Broker for Azure)
    5. 5 Optionally, AKS can be deployed with a VNET virtual network
  • Simplify the deployment and management of Microservices-based applicationsSimplify the deployment and management of Microservices-based applications12345567778
    1. Overview
    2. Flow

    Overview

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

    Flow

    1. 1 Developer uses IDE such as Visual Studio to commit changes to Github
    2. 2 Github triggers a new build on VSTS
    3. 3 VSTS packages microservices as containers and pushes them to the AzureContainer Registry
    4. 4 Containers are deployed to AKS cluster
    5. 5 Users access services via apps and website
    6. 6 Azure Active Directory is used to secure access to the resources
    7. 7 Microservices use databases to store and retrieve information
    8. 8 Administrator accesses via a separate admin portal
  • DevSecOps with AKSDevSecOps with AKS123456789
    1. Overview
    2. Flow

    Overview

    Use DevSecOps practices so you can move quickly at scale with enhanced security. Deliver code faster using Continuous Integration/Delivery. Accelerate the feedback loop with constant monitoring. Balance speed and security with policy enforcement for continuous security and deep traceability.

    Flow

    1. 1 Developers rapidly iterate, test, and debug different parts of an application together in the same Kubernetes cluster
    2. 2 Code is merged into a GitHub repository, after which automated builds and tests are run by Azure Pipelines
    3. 3 Container image is registered in Azure Container Registry
    4. 4 Kubernetes clusters are provisioned using tools like Terraform; Helm charts, installed by Terraform, define the desired state of app resources and configurations
    5. 5 Operators enforce policies to govern deployments to the AKS cluster
    6. 6 Release pipeline automatically executes pre-defined deployment strategy with each code change
    7. 7 Policy enforcement and auditing is added to CI/CD pipeline using Azure Policy
    8. 8 App telemetry, container health monitoring, and real-time log analytics are obtained using Azure Monitor
    9. 9 Insights used to address issues and fed into next sprint plans
  • Scale with ease using AKS and ACIScale with ease using AKS and ACI443321
    1. Overview
    2. Flow

    Overview

    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. As you run out of capacity in your AKS cluster, scale out additional pods in ACI without any additional servers to manage.

    Flow

    1. 1 User registers container in Azure Container Registry
    2. 2 Container images are pulled from the Azure Container Registry
    3. 3 AKS virtual node, a Virtual Kubelet implementation, provisions pods inside ACI from AKS when traffic comes in spikes.
    4. 4 AKS and ACI containers write to shared data store
  • IoT device deployment and management on demandIoT device deployment and management on demand