Azure Kubernetes Service

Introduction

Containers

• A container is an atomic unit of software that packages up code, dependencies, and configuration for a specific application.
• Containers allow you to split up monolithic applications into individual services that make up the solution.
• This rearchitecting of our application enables us to deploy these separate services via containers.

• Benefits:

1. Immutability - The unchanging nature of a container allows it to be deployed and run reliably with the same behavior from one compute environment to another.
2. Smaller Size - A container is similar to a VM, but without the kernel for each machine. Instead, they share a host kernel.
3. Lightweight - The container always relies on the host installed OS for kernel-specific services. The lightweight property makes containers less resource-intensive, so installing multiple containers is possible within the same compute environment.
4. Startup is fast - Containers start up in few seconds, unlike VMs, which can take minutes to start.

Container Management

• A container has a distinct life cycle that exists as a temporary machine.
• Its state passes through the stages of pending, running, and terminated.
• Container management involves deploying, upgrading, monitoring, and removing containers.

Kubernetes

• Kubernetes is a portable, extensible open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and the management of containerized workloads.
• Kubernetes abstracts away complex container management and provides us with a declarative configuration to orchestrate containers in different compute environments.

• A Kubernetes deployment is configured as a cluster. A cluster consists of at least one primary machine or control plane and one or more worker machines.

Azure Kubernetes Service

• AKS manages your hosted Kubernetes environment and makes it simple to deploy and manage containerized applications in Azure.
• Your AKS environment is enabled with features such as automated updates, self-healing, and easy scaling.
• Azure manages the control plane of your Kubernetes cluster for free.
• You manage the agent nodes in the cluster and only pay for the VMs on which your nodes run.

Workload Deployment to AKS