Kubernetes on Azure and Its use cases

5 min readMar 4, 2021

Azure Kubernetes Service:

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed container orchestration service, based on the open source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Deploy and manage containerised applications more easily with a fully managed Kubernetes service. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience and enterprise-grade security and governance.

The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides provisioning, scaling, and upgrades of resources in the Kubernetes cluster without any downtime, and the best part is that you don’t need deep knowledge and experience in container orchestration to handle AKS.

Benefits of Azure Kubernetes Services:

Efficient resource utilization:

The fully managed AKS offers easy deployment and management of containerized applications with efficient resource utilization that elastically provisions additional resources without the headache of managing the Kubernetes infrastructure.

Faster end-to-end development:

Developers spent most of the time on bug-fixing. AKS reduces the debugging time while handling patching, auto-upgrades, and self-healing and simplifies the container orchestration. It definitely saves a lot of time and developers will focus on developing their apps while remaining more productive.

Security and compliance:

Cybersecurity being one of most important aspects of modern applications and businesses, Azure Kubernetes Services provides Most comprehensive authentication and authorization capabilities using Azure Active Directory, and dynamic rules enforcement across multiple clusters with Azure Policy

Quicker development and integration:
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports auto-upgrades, monitoring, and scaling and helps in minimizing the infrastructure maintenance that leads to comparatively faster development and integration. It also supports provisioning additional compute resources in Serverless Kubernetes within seconds without worrying about managing the Kubernetes infrastructure
Azure Kubernetes Services is available in more regions than any other cloud provider

Azure Kubernetes Service Features:

Since AKS is a managed service, Microsoft handles all Kubernetes upgrades for the service, as new versions become available. Users can decide whether and when to upgrade the Kubernetes version in their own AKS cluster to reduce the possibility of accidental workload disruption.

In addition, AKS nodes can scale up or down to accommodate fluctuations in resource demands. For additional processing power, AKS also supports node pools enabled by graphics processing units (GPUs). This can be vital for compute-intensive workloads, such as scientific applications.

Users can access AKS via an AKS management portal, an AKS command-line interface (CLI), or using templates through tools such as Azure Resource Manager. The service also integrates with the Azure Container Registry (ACR) for Docker image storage, and supports the use of persistent data with Azure Disks.

Azure Kubernetes Service Use Cases:

Migration of existing applications:

You can easily migrate existing apps to containers and run them with Azure Kubernetes Service. You can also control access via Azure AD integration and SLA-based Azure Services like Azure Database using Open Service Broker for Azure (OSBA).

Microservices with AKS:
Use AKS to simplify the deployment and management of microservices based architecture. AKS streamlines horizontal scaling, self-healing, load balancing, secret management.
DevOps & Kubernetes together:
DevOps and Kubernetes are better together. Implementing secure DevOps together with Kubernetes on Azure, you can achieve the balance between speed and security and deliver code faster at scale.
Ease of scaling:
AKS can also be applied in many other use cases such as ease of scaling by using Azure Container Instances (ACI) and AKS. By doing this, you can use AKS virtual node to provision pods inside Azure Container Instance (ACI) that start within a few seconds and enables AKS to run with required resources. If your AKS cluster is run out of resources, if will scale-out additional pods automatically without any additional servers to manage in the Kubernetes environment.
Data Streaming scenario:
Use AKS to easily ingest & process a real-time data stream with millions of data points collected via sensors. Perform fast analysis and computations to develop insights into complex scenarios quickly.
Azure IoT reference architecture:
This reference architecture shows a recommended architecture for IoT applications on Azure using PaaS (platform-as-a-service) components.

MAERSK Case Study

Maersk uses the cloud to spur development of containerised solutions built on Kubernetes.

As part of its digital transformation efforts, shipping giant A.P. Moller — Maersk needed to streamline IT operations and optimize the value of its IT resources. Maersk adopted Microsoft Azure, migrated key workloads to the cloud, and modernized its open-source software, which included the adoption of Kubernetes on Azure. Maersk software engineers now spend less time on container software management and more time on innovation and value-added projects. The resulting business value is savings on resource costs, faster solution delivery time, and the ability to attract expert IT talent.

Implementing a container strategy
As part of its overall cloud migration strategy, Maersk chose Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to handle the automation and management of its containerized applications. (A containerized application is portable runtime software that is packaged with the dependencies and configuration files it needs in order to run, all in one place.) AKS fully supports the dynamic application environment in Maersk without requiring orchestration expertise.

As Rasmus Hald: Head of Cloud Architecture says:

Using Kubernetes on Azure satisfies our objectives for efficient software development. It aligns well with our digital plans and our choice of open-source solutions.

The company uses AKS to help set up, upgrade, and scale resources as needed, without taking its critical applications offline.

Hald summarizes the progress Maersk has made, saying, “Imagine solutions that harvest data that has never been available before — data that informs customers and ships’ crews about the condition of their cargo. Imagine data that powers a model that calculates IoT locations even when physical devices can’t be tracked. That’s the world we’ll soon live in, and Maersk will help make it possible.”