Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Features
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.6
17 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.116 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.815 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.3 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(5 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(27 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Microsoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
At one instance, there was a fire in our data center and the backup power had some issues because of which the whole DC went down. I believe with AKS and the replication it's easier to handle such a situation. Also, the scenario would have been pretty transparent to the end-users.
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Microsoft
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Highly repeatable process
  • Minimizes the amount of software to install
  • Easily scale resources to meet demand
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Microsoft
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Need to update cluster manually
  • Policies cannot be updated for existing components
  • if any change in policy every has to create cluster
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Microsoft
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft support was really good, whenever we raise any ticket they come back to us within a couple of hours.
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Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
The ability to create new instances (i.e. elastic provisioning) is probably the fastest with Azure Kubernetes Service compared to the alternatives that I have looked at. From a pricing perspective, Microsoft always seems to find a way to be more competitive in this area, and literally every other field they play in.
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Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • 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
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Microsoft
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
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ScreenShots