Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Score8.3 out of 10

81 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

Videos

Security and Isolation
Product provides effective tools to isolate containers, nodes, and clusters and protect them from threats.
Category average: 8.5
Self-Healing and Recovery
Product can be configured to automatically restart, replace, reschedule, kill, and validate jobs, containers, nodes, or clusters.
Category average: 8.3
Container Orchestration
The product’s ability to automate networking, deployment, scaling, and other container management functions.
Category average: 8.2

Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging
Product provides tools to manage performance, health, and other data related to containers or clusters. This could include analytics tools, logging tools, live dashboards, etc.
Category average: 8.3
Discovery Tools
Product provides methods (such as URIs or sortable lists) to easily find and access jobs, nodes, containers, or clusters.
Category average: 8.2
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: 7.9

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

26.5%

3,983 installations of 15,007

#2 most frequent

Information

13.7%

2,062 installations of 15,007

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

9.5%

1,430 installations of 15,007

Pros

Automated deployment and management of containerized images
High scalability and availability for applications
Seamless integration with other Azure services

Cons

Scattered and incomplete documentation and tooling
Complexity in managing specific configurations (e.g., certificate handling)
Challenges with node pool operations

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The problem that Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) adresses is the need for an runtime environment that allows to run our application in an orchestrated platform, that like Kubernetes allows automated deploy/management of containerized images. For this purpose it would be possible to use virtual machines (e.g. with plain docker) but of course even with a reduced complexity in some regard, such a solution would offer way less possibilities e.g. the use of an k8s operator. Besides this, Azure for example offers options (data centers, pricing)

Pros

Amount of locations (data centers) available
Option to commit to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for a longer periode to save cost
Offering a lot of configuration options, to custom-tailor it to your needs
Fast deployment of the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Nodes

Cons

Documentation about all of these different configuration options is scarce, scattered and sometimes even untraceable (undocumented)
Terraform provider often runs succesfully but elements are missing/not there and no error is thrown
The tool landscape arround it is not sophisticated, other providers offer a terraform runtime for example

Return on Investment

Extending the offering to more countries because of more locations available
Beeing forced to put more effort into certain aspects is likey help uns in a longterm, even though this investment was not small (with a few people and even consulting support, that can take months)
The question if you can profit from the longterm commitments depends on your level success respectively potential

Usability

Alternatives Considered

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Other Software Used

Azure Application Gateway, Azure Blob Storage, Microsoft Azure Key Vault

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our main use is that it allows us to run and manage our containerized application in a standardized way. It helps eliminate underlying hardware dependencies and offers us one pane of glass in a very reliable and scalable environment.

Pros

Gives us consistency across platforms and teams
Easy to integrate into the MS ecosystem
Very reliable and scalable

Cons

Lacks some key observability features which should be included
Challenges with multi or hybrid environments
Gaps in security functionality

Return on Investment

Improved scalability without redesigning out architecture
Easy integration with our existing Azure environment
Standardization across environments and deployments
Enterprise security features

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure AKS to run and manage our HRIS platform, which manages attendance and related tools for company employees. It also hosts several small web applications, both internal and customer-facing. Basically, AKS addresses the need for high availability, scalability, and automated deployments. Overall, it allows our team to focus on delivering features faster while maintaining a stable and scalable application.

Pros

Managed Kubernetes Service.
High availability.
Strong integration with Azure.
CI/CD and deployment automation.

Cons

Networking complexity.
Upgrade experience.
Learning and operational experience.

Return on Investment

Improved uptime and performance.
Optimize infrastructure usage.
Development efficiency.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure App Service

Other Software Used

Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Docker

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Engineering (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for our service deployments for our backend services. Our services are kubernetes based so this provides a good option for keeping our services deployed as we like.

Pros

Scaling
Deployments
Integration with Github and Azure's native CI/CD

Cons

Certificate management or custom addresses
Node pool management
Auto-provisioning of node pool

Return on Investment

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

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Kubernetes Engine and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

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

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Categories & Use Cases

Videos