Table of contents
1.
Azure Kubernetes Service
2.
Benefits of Azure Kubernetes Services(AKS)
3.
Features of Azure Kubernetes Services
4.
Use Cases of Azure Kubernetes Services
5.
Frequently Asked Questions
5.1.
What is Microsoft Azure?
5.2.
What is Azure Kubernetes Services?
5.3.
What are nodes and clusters in AKS?
5.4.
How does AKS ensure better resource utilization?
5.5.
How does AKS ensure security?
6.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Azure Kubernetes Service

Author Teesha Goyal
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Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) is a fully managed container management service. It is provided by Microsoft Azure which is the leading cloud service provider. The Azure Kubernetes Service provides customer serverless, continuous integration and deployment experience. It helps in forming and maintaining Kubernetes clusters quickly and efficiently.

AKS is an open-source service that offers a fast way of developing and deploying cloud-native applications. It has been available on Microsoft Azure public cloud since June 2018 for the customers to create, deploy and maintain their container-based applications in a clustered environment.

AKS takes care of the monitoring, maintenance, and upgrades of resources according to the requirements of the deployed applications making it easier for the developers to focus more on application workloads.

Benefits of Azure Kubernetes Services(AKS)

AKS is widely used for creating, managing, scaling, and monitoring Kubernetes clusters around the industry. There are the following benefits that make AKS better than other clusters management tools:

  1. Quicker Application Development: Developers spend a lot of time fixing bugs and troubleshooting. AKS supports auto-upgrades and self-healing, which improves the time spent on troubleshooting.
     
  2. Supports Agile Project Management: All the companies are adopting the  Agile Project Management cycle. AKS supports Agile by offering Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery/ Continuous Deployment (CD), and DevOps. The agile management cycle facilitates faster product delivery and faster updates.
     
  3. Better resource utilization: Resources are expensive, and it becomes essential to look over the resource requirements and allocations when it comes to the cloud. The AKS makes deploying and managing containerized applications simple. The AKS provides the ability to elastically supply more resources without managing the infrastructure.
     
  4. Faster End-to-end Development and Integration: By automating updates, repair, monitoring, and scaling, AKS reduces infrastructure maintenance costs. As a result, development and integration are accelerated. 
     
  5. Security and compliance: The integration of Azure with the Azure Active Directory (AD) offers an on-demand service to reduce cyber threats and risks. Security is a significant concern when dealing with confidential information that can be handled by issuing rights only to authorized users.
     
  6. Run any Workload in the Cloud: AKS allows us to choose any type of workload running in any environment. 

Features of Azure Kubernetes Services

Following are the most prominent features of AKS:

  1. Open-source environment: Microsoft Azure has made the AKS open-source and free to use. 
     
  2. Easy to use: AKS is a simple and straightforward tool that makes it more beginner-friendly and easy to use. It simplifies deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and scaling for the developers.
     
  3. Easier Cluster Updates: AKS supports auto upgrades that make it easier to monitor, scale and update clusters of containers in Azure.
     
  4. Nodes and clusters: A node is a physical or a virtual machine on which the applications run in Kubernetes. A collection of nodes is called clusters. Both nodes and clusters are salient components of AKS.
     
  5. Autoscaling nodes: AKS automatically scales nodes up or down according to the requirements. This feature ensures efficient resource utilization.
     
  6. Integration with other tools: AKS can be Integrated with various Azure and OSS tools and services to provide a broader range of functionalities.
     
  7. Security by RBAC: AKS integrated with Azure Active Directory (AD) to provide role-based authorization control(RBAC). RBAC ensures security by providing access to only authorized individuals to the classified data. 

Use Cases of Azure Kubernetes Services

Azure Kubernetes Services are highly by industries dealing with container-based applications. It facilitates faster development and deployment of applications. Following are some of the use cases of AKS:

  • AKS has brought together DevOps and Kubernetes. AKS is ideal for secure DevOps implementation with Kubernetes and improves the speed and security of the development process.
     
  • AKS is used to migrate the existing applications to the container-based paradigm and move the application to Azure Kubernetes.
     
  • AKS is used in many cases where you must frequently scale up and down the resources. AKS facilitates auto upgrades for resources as and when needed. An application can be deployed with minimal resources required and is scaled up once the requirement increases. 
     
  • Constant monitoring can also aid in the speeding up of the feedback loop. Azure pipelines can help with speedier delivery of applications while also adhering to Azure's policies.

Also see, kubernetes interview questions

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a leading cloud platform that lets you access the cloud services and resources provided by Microsoft. It provides a wide range of services, including computation, storage, analytics, and networking. 

What is Azure Kubernetes Services?

Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) is a fully managed container management service. It ensures container orchestration. It is provided by Microsoft Azure which is the leading cloud service provider. 

What are nodes and clusters in AKS?

A node is a physical or a virtual machine on which the applications run in Kubernetes. A collection of nodes is called clusters. Both nodes and clusters are salient components of AKS.

How does AKS ensure better resource utilization?

AKS integrates with other development tools to provide auto upgrades of resources. By doing so, we can launch the application with minimal resources, and then AKS automatically scales up and down the resources according to the requirements.  

How does AKS ensure security?

AKS integrated with Azure Active Directory (AD) to provide role-based authorization control(RBAC). RBAC ensures security by providing access to only authorized individuals to the classified data. 

Conclusion

This article discussed Azure Kubernetes Services. We also discussed the features, benefits, and use cases of Azure Kubernetes Services. 

I hope you would have gained a better understanding of these topics now!

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