How Organisations Can Leverage Azure Kubernetes Service

Containers have been gaining pace with architects and engineers in recent times as an ever-increasing number of organisations understand and adopt this technology. At a high level, containers should simplify how applications are deployed and scaled. Orchestrating how containers are scaled and managed comes with its own complexities, this is where Kubernetes can help. Kubernetes is an open source, cross platform system that abstracts many of the processes for scaling, deploying and managing containers. The Azure specific implementation of Kubernetes is called Azure Kubernetes Service, or just AKS. This article centers on the features and benefits of AKS and how organisations can begin to adopt containers for applications.

What is Azure Kubernetes Service?

AKS is a container orchestration service, based on the Kubernetes framework, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Organisations can utilise AKS to deliver, scale and manage containers and container-based applications across clusters of nodes. ?Providing a powerful and smart container orchestration service that manages resources available to applications in seconds where resources are both allocated and deallocated automatically and efficiently.

AKS helps in the deployment and the management of containerised applications effectively with a completely managed Kubernetes service. It offers a solution that integrates well with a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) methodology along with high-level security and services.

AKS ensures all these operations and responsibilities are delivered through:

·???????Container Orchestration: Without container orchestration, if a container was facing downtime and stopped working, an engineer would not necessarily know the container had failed and would need to manually start another one. Kubernetes gives a robust framework of automation capability to help prevent manual tasks and prevent downtime.

·???????Cloud Agnostic: Kubernetes has been designed and developed to be used in any environment (public/private/hybrid clouds). ?This makes the migration of container-based workloads between the cloud and on-premise simpler.

·???????Improved Agility: Reduced deployment of work processes and focus on development. Kubernetes provides a smooth configuration that allows engineers to characterise how their services are to be run by Kubernetes, Kubernetes will then ensure the condition of the application is maintained.

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Benefits include:

Faster Time-to-Market

AKS enables a "microservices" application development methodology. Moving away from monolithic application architecture allows for more agile development and benefits such as application component scalability. Development teams can also specialize in specific service areas enhancing productivity and speed of development. Furthermore, it allows for the management of vast applications across various containers even more proficiently by dealing with many of the complex roles of maintaining container-based applications.

Security & Compliance

Cloud security is arguably one of the top three priorities of any CIO. As a result, increased homeworking caused by Covid-19, 2020 saw a proliferation of cyber-attacks. Poor user controls and training led to a significant number of breaches being actioned from the “inside”.

?AKS helps to secure your platform by allowing administrators to granular with access controls using Azure Active Directory (AD) as the basis for Role Based Access Control (RBAC). By limiting access based on a “roll” basis, the insider risk threat is reduced. AKS can help meet the administrative requirements of System and Organisation Controls (SOC), lending suitability to organisations subject to ISO, HIPAA, and HITRUST compliance.

Infrastructure reduction

Where legacy infrastructure involves vast and complex tools, AKS can help in reducing the costs. Container-based architecture can reduce costs by combining the applications together with your cloud and hardware. Before AKS, architects regularly over-provisioned their environments to deal with ad hoc changes, or because it was difficult and complex to manually scale containerised applications.

Consumption-Based IT

AKS and the scaling it brings to container-based workloads is a natural fit for consumption-based IT.?At times of high demand AKS can help scale out the resources required for your applications, then, during times of low demand consumption costs can be dramatically reduced through automated scale in of the infrastructure.

Summary

Businesses are experiencing a substantial shift in the way that applications are both hosted and developed.?With the advent of cloud services and applications based on microservices, there is an opportunity for organisations to be far leaner and more dynamic with how supporting resources are provisioned.

AKS provides a robust solution where engineers and architects can host and build container-based applications using Kubernetes on Azure. ?Cost Optimisation, faster speed to market when compared to deploying to onsite hardware, and improved scaling are some of the benefits of AKS.

A good example of AKS being implemented by a global organisation is with Bosch. “Bosch expands vehicle safety with the help of map-matching algorithms and Azure Kubernetes Service”. Bosch integrated a software development kit (SDK) designed for use by application designers with AKS to save the lives of drivers going the wrong way on the highways. The architecture worked on an innovative algorithm and the adaptability of AKS along with Azure HDInsight tools that include the Apache Kafka streaming platform.