Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Helm

AKS works very well for running containerized applications that require high availability and scalability. This includes systems like our HRIS platform and customer-facing web applications. AKS is a good choice when applications are broken into multiple services that need independent scaling and deployment. It provides the flexibility needed to manage these architectures effectively. But for single, low-traffic applications or simple internal tools, AKS can be overkill. For scenarios like that Azure App Service would be better.

Incentivized

If you need to automate the deployment of environments in Kubernetes and these environments should be easily replicable in other regions of your cloud provider or even in other cloud providers, then this is the tool for you. Just be prepared for a certain degree of complexity when creating the charts.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Templates - The ability to create templates is really helpful and help creates a baseline for package management.
• Rollbacks - it is godsend. Period.
• Dry-run - This really is helpful when troubleshooting deployments and is great for testing out new charts as well.

Incentivized

• Steep learning curve
• Expected charges are unclear until you see real production usage
• Operations teams need to learn an entirely new skill set

Incentivized

• concurrent deployments
• templating values files

Incentivized

As already said, the UI/CLI and even terraform are perfectly fine, but certain details could be documented better. For instance, if I want to secure the whole Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with my own managed keys, then it is very complex and hard to get there. Not really a single source that gives you the whole picture. Besides that, it is still good to use, in most cases intuitive but details mentioned as above can be tricky.

Incentivized

Microsoft support was really good, whenever we raise any ticket they come back to us within a couple of hours.

Incentivized

We didn't really need support, but the open-source community seemed responsive and informative when it came to issues. Many cloud native consultancy companies (including ourselves) offer support for Helm.

Incentivized

Amazon EKS stacked up very well and had better performance in some areas. However, Azure Kubernetes Service was a better fit given our Azure environment.

Incentivized

We have a natural trending to use what is a reference in its space and Helm has being leader in its area for a long time. Since it has all features we need didn't make sense to us to invest time on researching and testing other alternatives, so Helm was our first and only tool in regards of automating deployments on Kubernetes

Incentivized

• We had to spend more time on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) than on AWS and GCP to get our kubernetes cluster up and running
• The resources on nodes need to be left out unused, so effectively it is wasting money there
• It definitely made us spend more time into maintaining kubernetes

Incentivized

• Reduction in human effort.
• Streamline software versions and upgrades.

Incentivized