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What is Azure Kubernetes Service?
Microsoft Azure platform offers multiple popular services, Azure Kubernetes service is one of them. Azure Kubernetes service available on the Microsoft Azure platform since June 2018. AKS is a container orchestration service that helps you manage, scale, and deploy containerized applications in seconds in a cluster environment on Azure. Kubernetes cluster consists of a number of nodes which are master and worker nodes. You can consider a node in Kubernetes to be equal to a virtual machine (VM).
The master node just handles and manages the cluster, it contains the Kubernetes API and database that contains the cluster state. The master node does not run any container.
It’s a worker node that actually runs the containers. The worker nodes are the VMs that run on your actual workload.
How Does Azure Kubernetes Service Work?
AKS makes it simpler and easier to create a cluster. Once you create the AKS cluster, AKS sets up the Kubernetes master for you, and then it will create the VMs in your subscription after that it will turn those VMs into worker nodes of your Kubernetes cluster in your network. You have to only pay for the worker nodes, you don’t need to pay for the master node, since the Kubernetes cluster master is managed by Azure and is free. You manage the agent nodes in the cluster and only pay for the VMs on which your nodes run.
Azure Kubernetes Service Benefits
Azure Kubernetes Service offers provisioning, scaling, and upgrades of resources as per requirement. It also has the ability to easily scale your clusters, either making them bigger or smaller without any downtime in the Kubernetes cluster. AKS contains built-in logic to upgrade clusters to newer Kubernetes versions.
Integrations of AKS with other services make its operations easier. AKS easily integrates with Azure Active Directory (AD) to provide role-based access, security, and monitoring of Kubernetes architecture on the basis of identity and group membership. Role-based access control (RBAC) is the configuration process that defines which users get access to resources and which actions they can take against those resources. AKS is also integrated into Azure Monitor for containers, which makes monitoring and troubleshooting your Deployment simpler. some of the core benefits are mentioned below.
- 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.
- Supports Agile Project Management: One of the key benefits of AKS is that it supports agile development programs – Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery/ Continuous Deployment (CD), and DevOps.
- Faster application 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 is one of the most important aspects of modern applications and businesses. AKS integrates with Azure Active Directory (AD) and offers on-demand access to users to greatly reduce threats and risks.
- Run any Workload in the Cloud: You are able to orchestrate any type of workload running in the environment of your choice. You can move .NET applications to Windows Server containers or modernize Java applications in Linux containers and also, run microservices applications in the public cloud. AKS has a solution for you.
Azure Kubernetes (AKS) Security Best Practices
- Enable Kubernetes RBAC
- Enable Network Policies
- Create Private Clusters