Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Score7.9 out of 10

64 Reviews and Ratings

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Microsoft's Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is designed to make deploying and managing containerized applications easy. It offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. It allows development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.

Categories & Use Cases

Resource Allocation and Optimization
Product’s ability to balance resource requirements, availability needs, and workload intensity to optimize resource usage.
Category average: 7.8
Security and Isolation
Product provides effective tools to isolate containers, nodes, and clusters and protect them from threats.
Category average: 8.5
Container Orchestration
The product’s ability to automate networking, deployment, scaling, and other container management functions.
Category average: 8.2

Storage Management
Product’s ability to allocate storage resources and manage both temporary and persistent data.
Category average: 8.2
Cluster Management
Product’s ability to centralize the management of multiple container or node clusters.
Category average: 8.1
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks
Product provides tools or functionality to deliver updates to containerized applications in ways that minimize the impact of errors, and revert updates that cause problems.
Category average: 7.7

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

29.4%

2,958 installations of 10,053

#2 most frequent

Information

16.4%

1,652 installations of 10,053

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

12.7%

1,280 installations of 10,053

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to deploy container workloads mostly for microservices and other applications. It gives us flexibility in terms of scaling the compute based on application requirements. We can easily expand immediately rather thank waiting for someone to actually provision the compute. Also we are using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to do a burst mode where we need some workloads to run for a short amount of time and then shutdown. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) perfectly fits into that.

Pros

Container workloads
Auto scaling
Standard kubernetes deployment
Easily integrate with Azure monitoring and Logging

Cons

GUI on azure portal need to enhanced.
The feature set should be matching with Openshift which is also kubernetes based
Troubleshooting errors

Return on Investment

It is cheap and able to deploy the same workloads as OCP but at lesser cost
The ability to dynamically scale up and down makes this a preferred choice for container workloads
The security and patching capabilities provided by Microsoft can be trusted

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine and SUSE Rancher

Other Software Used

Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Azure Container Apps, Azure Container Registry, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory

Scott Kennedy View profile

Director, eCommerce Analytics and Digital Marketing in Marketing at Franklin Sports (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

Scales quickly when the user base increases randomly
Downgrades very fast if a bunch of users hop off the system
Great dev UX for IT

Cons

The pricing structure is complicated
The stats on usage isn't the easiest to understand
The overall microsoft contract is hard to wrap my head around

Most Important Features

Only paying for storage we use
Awesome documentation process
Dev UX is pretty solid

Return on Investment

The ability to scale has reduced the need for headcount in IT
The authentication process has kept us compliant with regulatory bodies
The ability to replicate environments is great.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service and D2iQ Mesosphere

Other Software Used

Fortinet on IBM Cloud, Amazon Athena, Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Mounika Chirasani View profile

Software Engineer in Engineering at JDA Software (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

To scale the microservices very easily.
Easy to set up in CI/CD pipeline.
It has a good pricing option as well in Azure. Basic works fine.
Accelerates containerized application development for the developers.

Cons

Database services monitoring is weak.
It doesn't possess a good monitoring solution.
Response times in cloud applications could be faster.

Return on Investment

Accelerates the development of a developer.
To scale the microservices very easily.
easy to set up in CI/CD.

Other Software Used

Azure SQL Database, Azure API Management, Azure Application Gateway

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) helps to offload the data and high processing load (as need be) to outside our data center and increase the availability for different necessary applications. The transition to AKS wasn't that difficult. We are almost confident and ready to have more production data in AKS.

Pros

AKS makes it easier to replicate data to multiple regions
Azure portal make it easier to manage the resources of the organization

Cons

It's a little challenging to foresee how much would be the cost to incur for our usage

Most Important Features

High data availability
Can scale up as and when needed so we can have higher processing
Maintenance is off loaded to a dependable and stable entity

Return on Investment

Positive impact in moving applications to cloud from the in-hose data center to save cost
Sometimes got affected with some bugs on the AKS infrastructure but hasn't caused a big kios as our production footprint in AKS is not yet high

Other Software Used

Rundeck, Datadog, Pivotal RabbitMQ

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used Azure Kubernetes for CI/CD pipeline for scale and manage microservice application. To manage and containerize applications, scaling services based on load. Used Azure Kubernetes for all application deployment and integration, containerization and scaling of applications. It is highly appreciable with its usage and policies, easy to maintain, governance and helpful for continuous deployment and integration.

Pros

Continuous deployment
Continuous Integration
Containerization of application
Security of Microsoft playing a vital role
Management and governance of application

Cons

Need to update cluster manually
Policies cannot be updated for existing components
if any change in policy every has to create cluster

Most Important Features

Cost efficient
Microsoft security and management
Easy management to scale application

Return on Investment

Highly scalable application is supported
Easy and quick to deploy and integrate application
Less efficient for cluster change management

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Other Software Used

Azure CDN, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Google Authenticator

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Categories & Use Cases