¶ AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)
¶ Dev Ops
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¶ Introduction to AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service): A DevOps Gateway to Scalable, Cloud-Native Orchestration
DevOps has become far more than a technical practice. It’s a way of thinking—an approach to building, shipping, and running software that prioritizes speed, collaboration, reliability, and continuous improvement. But even the most well-aligned teams quickly run into a challenge that DevOps alone cannot solve: how do you run applications that are distributed, containerized, constantly being updated, and expected to stay online no matter what? How do you give developers the freedom to innovate while giving operations enough control to maintain stability?
This is the gap Kubernetes was designed to fill. And while Kubernetes brought incredible power to engineering teams, it also introduced new layers of complexity. Running Kubernetes yourself means managing control planes, keeping clusters healthy, upgrading components, patching vulnerabilities, dealing with certificates, scaling nodes, and handling networking intricacies. The innovation is undeniable, but the overhead can be overwhelming. That is where AKS—Azure Kubernetes Service—steps in, not as a replacement for Kubernetes but as a trusted partner that carries the operational burden so that teams can focus on using Kubernetes instead of maintaining it.
AKS is Microsoft’s fully managed Kubernetes offering, and it has become one of the most widely adopted orchestration platforms in the cloud-native world. What makes AKS stand out is its balance between flexibility and convenience. It gives you the full power of Kubernetes without making you manage the underlying control plane. It integrates deeply with Azure’s ecosystem, making it easier to set up everything from networking to observability. And it brings DevOps teams closer to the ideal world where applications can scale seamlessly, updates can roll out without downtime, and infrastructure becomes something you can automate with confidence instead of constantly fighting.
Before diving into the technical layers of AKS, it helps to understand why the industry moved toward container orchestration in the first place. Traditional deployment models weren’t built for the scale and dynamism of today’s systems. Applications were packaged into large monolithic services, deployed on fixed servers, and updated manually. When traffic increased, teams scrambled to provision new machines. When dependencies conflicted, troubleshooting felt like untangling a mess of wires. And when different environments—development, staging, production—started behaving inconsistently, the stress rippled across teams.
Containerization changed the game by making applications portable, predictable, and isolated. But once hundreds or thousands of containers began running across multiple hosts, a new problem emerged: orchestrating everything. You needed something that could schedule containers on the right nodes, restart failing applications automatically, keep track of desired versus actual state, and distribute traffic intelligently. Kubernetes emerged as the answer, becoming the standard platform for running microservices and container-native applications.
Yet anyone who has tried setting up a Kubernetes cluster manually knows that it isn’t a task for the faint of heart. Kubernetes is powerful because it is modular and flexible, but that means a lot of moving parts: etcd clusters, API servers, schedulers, controller managers, kubelets, networking plugins, storage drivers, certificate rotation, cluster upgrades, and more. Each component needs care, monitoring, and maintenance. For organizations adopting Kubernetes at scale, this operational burden becomes a roadblock rather than an enabler.
AKS takes this burden away. It handles the control plane, which means Azure is responsible for keeping the core Kubernetes components healthy, secure, and up to date. You don’t have to worry about managing master nodes, patching API servers, or upgrading etcd. Instead, your attention shifts back to the workloads—the applications, the deployments, the services, and everything your users interact with. AKS maintains the health of the cluster’s foundation so you can focus on building on top of it.
One of the strongest aspects of AKS is the way it blends the native Kubernetes experience with Azure’s larger ecosystem. For networking, AKS can work with Azure CNI to integrate pods directly into the virtual network, allowing them to communicate securely with other services. For identity, AKS ties into Azure Active Directory, giving you fine-grained control over who can do what. For monitoring, Azure Monitor and Log Analytics provide deep visibility into cluster health, performance, and application behavior. For scaling, AKS supports both horizontal pod autoscaling and cluster autoscaling, ensuring that your workloads always have the right amount of resources without manual intervention.
And then there’s the question of reliability. Downtime is one of the biggest fears for any DevOps team, especially in systems that serve users around the clock. AKS addresses this by distributing nodes across availability zones, offering self-healing mechanisms, and making upgrades less risky through node pools that can be rolled out gradually or replaced without disrupting workloads. You can also deploy multiple clusters, spread applications across regions, and combine AKS with Azure traffic management tools for global resilience.
A central principle in DevOps is automation—turning repetitive tasks into predictable scripts and pipelines. AKS embodies this philosophy by integrating seamlessly with CI/CD workflows. You can use GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or any other pipeline tool to build, scan, test, and deploy container images into AKS. Declarative manifests ensure that deployments behave consistently. Helm charts allow packaging of entire applications. Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform and Bicep let you define clusters and environments in version-controlled templates. The result is an ecosystem where clusters are not snowflakes—they’re reproducible, automatable, and traceable.
As you explore AKS in depth, you’ll see how it supports a huge variety of workloads. Some teams use it to run microservices, each isolated and evolving independently. Others use it for machine learning pipelines, running GPU-enabled workloads that scale up and down as needed. Many organizations run event-driven systems, batch processing tasks, or real-time analytics engines on AKS. Its flexibility makes it valuable to startups experimenting rapidly, enterprises undergoing modernization, and global platforms running mission-critical services.
Another important dimension of AKS is cost efficiency. Kubernetes gives you the power to pack workloads more intelligently onto nodes, trim unused resources, and spin up capacity precisely when you need it. AKS enhances this with features such as virtual nodes, spot instances, autoscaling, and node pool customization. Instead of overspending on idle machines, you can fine-tune the cluster to match real-world demand. DevOps teams often find that with the right governance and monitoring, AKS becomes not just a modern platform but an economically smart investment.
Security is also a major pillar. Cloud-native environments introduce new challenges—secrets management, container vulnerabilities, supply-chain risks, network boundaries, and policy enforcement. AKS integrates with Azure Key Vault for secure storage of secrets, supports network policies, and allows you to inject policies into the cluster through Azure Policy. With managed identities, you reduce the exposure of credentials. With node image upgrades and cluster patching support, AKS ensures that the underlying infrastructure stays secure without requiring constant manual oversight.
It’s worth noting that AKS doesn’t try to hide Kubernetes or replace it with proprietary abstractions. Instead, it aims to be a natural extension—making Kubernetes easier without diluting its power. This matters because the broader Kubernetes ecosystem is massive, and teams want to use familiar tools: kubectl, Helm, CRDs, operators, service meshes, ingress controllers, and monitoring stacks like Prometheus and Grafana. AKS respects that ecosystem and works with it rather than around it.
This course will take you deep into that world. You’ll explore how AKS clusters work internally, how to design applications for them, how to automate deployments, how to secure environments, how to scale systems intelligently, and how to troubleshoot real-world issues. You will gradually build a strong mental model of Kubernetes itself, then layer on how AKS enhances and manages parts of it. By the time you finish the full set of articles, AKS will feel like an approachable, intuitive platform rather than an intimidating piece of cloud infrastructure.
You’ll get comfortable with cluster creation, node pools, networking models, pods, services, ingress controllers, persistent storage, monitoring, and autoscaling. You’ll learn how DevOps practices like CI/CD, GitOps, observability, and infrastructure as code fit naturally into AKS environments. You’ll understand how to structure environments across development, testing, staging, and production, and how to manage updates with minimal risk.
More importantly, this course will explore the mindset that makes AKS truly shine. Running Kubernetes effectively isn’t just about technical commands—it’s about understanding the flow of deployments, the lifecycle of containers, the patterns of distributed systems, and the rhythm of DevOps processes. AKS allows teams to embrace those patterns without drowning in operational overhead. It becomes the kind of platform that feels empowering rather than constraining.
AKS represents a shift in how teams build and run software. It enables you to move from static, server-based systems to dynamic, container-native environments. It gives you the freedom to scale globally, update continuously, and respond to failures with resilience rather than panic. And it aligns perfectly with DevOps principles—collaboration, automation, visibility, and continuous delivery.
This introduction is the first step in a long and meaningful journey. The articles that follow will peel back the layers of AKS, making the complexities of Kubernetes understandable and the possibilities of cloud-native architectures exciting. Whether you’re part of a team modernizing legacy systems or building brand-new applications on the cloud, AKS offers a strong foundation.
By the end of this course, AKS won’t feel like an intimidating cloud service. It will feel like a powerful ally—one that helps you build reliable, scalable, automated, and modern applications with confidence. And it will give you the perspective needed to design systems that embrace the future rather than resist it.
This is your gateway into the world of AKS and cloud-native DevOps. The rest of the journey will show you how to wield it with clarity, purpose, and skill.
¶ AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)
¶ Beginner (Introduction to AKS & Basic DevOps Concepts)
1. Introduction to Cloud-Native Applications
2. What is Kubernetes and Why Should You Care?
3. Understanding Containers and Docker Basics
4. Getting Started with Microsoft Azure
5. Overview of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
6. Setting Up Your Azure Account and Azure CLI
7. Understanding the AKS Architecture
8. Creating Your First AKS Cluster
9. Navigating Azure Portal for AKS
10. Configuring Azure CLI for AKS Management
11. Exploring AKS Node Pools and their Roles
12. Introduction to Kubernetes Concepts
13. Pod Management and Deployments in Kubernetes
14. Managing Kubernetes Resources with kubectl
15. Deploying a Simple Application on AKS
16. Scaling Applications in AKS
17. Introduction to Kubernetes Services and Networking
18. Managing Secrets and ConfigMaps in AKS
19. Understanding AKS Storage Options
20. Monitoring Your First AKS Cluster with Azure Monitor
21. Introduction to DevOps: The AKS Perspective
22. Basic CI/CD Pipelines in Azure DevOps
23. Integrating AKS with Azure Active Directory (AAD)
24. Automating AKS Cluster Creation with Azure CLI
25. Understanding Helm for Kubernetes Deployment
26. Deploying Applications with Helm Charts
27. Managing Kubernetes Deployments Using YAML
28. Building a Simple Continuous Integration Pipeline
29. Introduction to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in AKS
30. AKS Cluster Configuration with Terraform
¶ Intermediate (Advanced Kubernetes & DevOps Practices)
31. Advanced Kubernetes Networking: Services & Ingress Controllers
32. Securing AKS Clusters with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
33. Managing Kubernetes Namespaces in AKS
34. Handling Multi-Tenant Applications in AKS
35. Configuring Horizontal Pod Autoscaling in AKS
36. Health Checks and Readiness Probes in AKS
37. Optimizing AKS Cluster Performance
38. Storage Management in AKS: Persistent Volumes and Claims
39. Working with Azure Container Registry (ACR)
40. Building and Pushing Docker Images to ACR
41. Setting Up CI/CD for AKS with GitHub Actions
42. Using Azure DevOps Pipelines for AKS Deployment
43. Blue-Green Deployments on AKS
44. Canary Releases in Kubernetes with AKS
45. Managing Application Configurations Using ConfigMaps
46. Implementing Secrets Management in AKS
47. Centralized Logging with Azure Monitor and AKS
48. Automating AKS Updates and Upgrades
49. Introduction to Service Mesh with Istio in AKS
50. Implementing Network Policies in AKS
51. Monitoring Application Health with Prometheus & Grafana
52. Centralized Metric Collection with Azure Monitor
53. Working with Azure Monitor for Containers
54. Scaling AKS Clusters with Cluster Autoscaler
55. Deploying Stateful Applications on AKS
56. Scaling StatefulSets in AKS
57. Implementing Continuous Delivery with AKS
58. Deploying Microservices with AKS
59. Implementing Service Discovery with AKS
60. Using Azure Key Vault with AKS for Secret Management
61. Managing Helm Releases and Versioning
62. Designing Multi-Cluster Architectures with AKS
63. Understanding Kubernetes Operators and Their Role in AKS
64. Automating AKS Security Patching
65. Implementing GitOps for AKS with Azure DevOps and Flux
66. Troubleshooting AKS Cluster and Application Issues
67. Using kubectl to Debug Pods and Containers
68. Upgrading Kubernetes Versions in AKS
69. Working with Azure Virtual Networks for AKS
70. Integrating AKS with Azure Active Directory B2C
71. Deploying Serverless Functions on AKS
72. Implementing CI/CD for Microservices with AKS
73. Managing Permissions and Access Control in AKS
74. Creating Self-Healing Applications on AKS
75. Configuring Auto-scaling Based on Metrics in AKS
¶ Advanced (Deep Dive into AKS, DevOps, and Advanced Use Cases)
76. Advanced Kubernetes Security in AKS
77. Implementing Network Segmentation in AKS
78. Advanced Helm Usage: Custom Charts and Templates
79. Customizing Azure Kubernetes Service Networking with Calico
80. Deploying Multi-Region AKS Clusters for High Availability
81. Integrating AKS with Azure Logic Apps for Automation
82. Building Advanced CI/CD Pipelines with Azure DevOps for AKS
83. Utilizing AKS with Azure Functions for Event-Driven Architecture
84. Kubernetes Persistent Storage Management: Advanced Concepts
85. Managing Secrets Across Multiple Clusters in AKS
86. Working with Advanced Networking Features: VPN, ExpressRoute
87. Implementing AKS with Azure Sentinel for Security
88. Creating Advanced Multi-Tenant Systems on AKS
89. Building an End-to-End DevSecOps Pipeline for AKS
90. Creating a Custom Kubernetes Operator for AKS
91. Scaling AKS Clusters Automatically with Azure Scale Sets
92. Deploying and Managing GPU-Based Applications in AKS
93. Disaster Recovery for AKS Clusters and Applications
94. Advanced Cluster Monitoring and Custom Metrics in AKS
95. Building a Hybrid Cloud Solution with AKS and Azure Arc
96. Automating Disaster Recovery and Failover in AKS
97. Implementing Edge Computing with AKS
98. Advanced Cost Management and Optimization for AKS
99. Designing High-Performance, Low-Latency Solutions in AKS
100. Future Trends in AKS and Kubernetes Ecosystem