AKS: Exploring Capabilities and Building Your First Sample Application

Azure offers a fantastic opportunity for developers to explore container services in the cloud with its $200 free credit for new accounts. 

This credit allows you to experiment, learn, and build applications without incurring immediate costs. Let's dive into how you can make the most of this offer and get hands-on experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

What can you do with the Free Credit 

When you sign up for an Azure free account, you receive $200 credit to use within 30 days. This credit gives you access to a wide range of Azure services, including AKS. Here's how you can leverage this opportunity:

Explore Azure Portal 

Familiarize yourself with the Azure portal interface, where you'll manage your resources and services.

Create Resource Groups 

Organize your projects by creating resource groups, which act as containers for related resources.

Deploy AKS Clusters

This was my main focus to deploy a simple app in AKS and understand the Kubernetes integrations .

Azure's control plane management offers significant advantages, particularly for smaller organizations without dedicated DevOps teams.Azure handles the control plane

taking care of patches and upgrades, allowing you to focus solely on application deployment. This approach streamlines your workflow and reduces operational overhead.

While using Docker Hub is convenient for testing Azure services, it doesn't seem to be supported . I was able to use ACR ( Azure Container Registry ) , this would be integrated solution for Azure . However most organizations will prefer private container registries for security and compliance reasons.

Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA)

HPA in cloud environments offers more comprehensive scaling capabilities.HPA manages not just pod scaling but also coordinates with cluster autoscaling for efficient node management.

Cloud platforms excel in scenarios requiring rapid and frequent scaling, offering flexibility that's harder to achieve with on-premises solutions.

Admission Controllers and Add-ons

While many Admission Controller use cases can be implemented as add-ons in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), it's important to consider:

Native Kubernetes Flexibility: Some operations that are straightforward in native Kubernetes might require additional configuration or external services in managed Kubernetes offerings.

Trade-offs: The convenience of managed services often comes at the cost of some flexibility. Evaluate whether the simplification aligns with your specific requirements and use cases.

My test stops here but you can do more by Deploying your ML workloads , Implement CICD ,etc

Sample Application Deployment in AKS

To help you get started, I've created a sample Java application that can be deployed in AKS.

Github

The application and detailed deployment instructions are available in my GitHub repository. Here's a high-level overview of the steps:

• Clone the Repository. -  Download the sample application code and Kubernetes manifests.
• Build the Docker Image - Package your Java application into a container image.
• Push to Container Registry -  Upload your image to Azure Container Registry (ACR).
• Create AKS Cluster -  Use the Azure portal or CLI to set up your Kubernetes cluster.
• Deploy the Application -  Apply the Kubernetes manifests to deploy your app to AKS.

Access the Application -  Configure ingress or use port forwarding to access your running application.

Containerization Github List  ->   Github Containers