Kubernetes is an open-source and is built in such a way that, it could be used in every aspect of any application, starting from on-premises to public clouds, including hybrid or private environments. The main purpose of why everyone moving towards Kubernetes is because of its flexibility to alter the cluster size that is required to execute a service.  The container of Kubernetes maintains containerized platforms that offer flexibility and control over the application.

What are Kubernetes ?

Kubernetes can be defined as a container orchestration application system used for automating the software development, management, and scaling. This is also known as K8’s, and it is an open-source containerized application.

Kubernetes groups the containers, which makes an application easily manageable and discoverable by using its logical units. As Kubernetes is an open source, it distributes the clusters into different platforms of public or  hybrid infrastructures.

The additional benefits of Kubernetes and why we need to consider it as one of the best options for cloud migration we can check them in the below given points.

Additional Benefits Of Kubernetes

1. Kubernetes is beneficial for our Business Productivity – as it reduces the manual processing of the application, so we can get the required results and ease amount of time.

2. Kubernetes provides multi-cloud capability – Here, multi-cloud capability means we can move our application from a single cloud or spread it out across different cloud platforms. So that we can make sure that our application is more resilient and convenient.

3. Cost Optimization to use –The cost of Kubernetes is more affordable compared to other alternatives, so anyone can use it.

4. Free and Open-source – The open-source feature of Kubernetes provides an extensive community team to support the application all the time. It says that we can make use of the Kubernetes clusters in the way we want, we do not have to pay for software license every time we use.

5. Portability –The portability feature of Kubernetes provides an advantage to carefree about the type of container they will be in their applications because Kubernetes can handle all types of instances. As it can work with different types of infrastructures, like on-premises, public cloud, or hybrid. This makes Kubernetes stands out compared to other competitors.

When do we have to migrate to clouds?

Every legacy application requires the modernization, whether it could be upgrading from monolithic to microservice application or moving from legacy tech-stacks to new technologies.

Modernizing the applications from monolithic to container-based application is one of the first step, where we have to identify which application or workload we want to move to the cloud. Then to find out how much data needs to be moved then to check how quickly the work needs to be done and how can we migrate the data, to get successful in K8’s deployment. After completion of this initial step, you can migrate any application to Kubernetes.

Here are some of biggest reasons why organizations migrate to cloud:

• Reduces IT Costs
• Increases Business Agility
• Improvement in Security Management
• Growth Acceleration
• Leveraging new technologies

How Kubernetes work with Azure?

Azure provides managed Kubernetes services known as Azure Kubernetes Service in which azure manages the master node and end-user needs to manage worker nodes. The AKS or we can also pronounce as Azure Kubernetes Service provides the fastest way to start developing and deploying cloud-native application in Azure. AKS helps in managing the overhead involved tasks by reducing the complexity of deployment.

With its Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure offers a fully managed Kubernetes solution. If you are having familiar with the concepts of Kubernetes, it works easily and makes the application up and run quickly.

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ?

Azure Kubernetes Service or AKS is a managed container orchestration service which is based on open-source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure Public Cloud. Organizations can use AKS to handle critical functionality such as deploying, scaling and managing docker containers and containers-based applications.

AKS became popular and available to industry from June 2018, and it became most frequently used by Software developers and IT operation teams.

Even though Kubernetes is an open-source platform, it requires a lot of overhead in cluster management. AKS helps in managing most of the overhead involved, by reducing the complexity of deployment and management tasks. The AKS is built for organizations that wants scalable applications with Docker and Kubernetes while using the Azure Architecture.

Advantages of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

The Primary advantage of AKS is its flexibility, automation and reduced management for developers and administrators. For example, AKS automatically configures all the nodes of Kubernetes, which control and manage the worker nodes during the deployment process and handles a range of other tasks, including Azure Active Directory integration, connecting to monitoring services and configuration of advanced networking features like HTTP application routing. So, users can monitor the clusters directly with Azure Monitors.

In addition to that, AKS nodes scale up or down to accommodate fluctuate in resource demand. It also supports node pools enabled by GPU’s Graphics Processing Units.

The Architecture of AKS

When a user creates an AKS cluster, a control plane is automatically gets created and configured. A Control plane is a managed Azure Service or resource, which cannot be accessed by user directly. The Control Plane contains:

• Provides an interaction bridge for management tools
• Helps in maintaining the state and configuration of Kubernetes cluster
• It helps to schedule and specifies which nodes need to run the workload

The user defines the size and number of nodes, and then the Azure platform configures a secure communication between the nodes and the control plane.

An AKS cluster has at least one node. Central processing unit and memory are the node resources used to help the node function as part of a cluster. Nodes with similar configurations are grouped together into node pools.

Comparing Azure Kubernetes (AKS) and Amazon Kubernetes (EKS)

AKS:

• AKS supports configurable Ips and uses role based access control in their clusters.
• It supports in deployment of private containers. This feature allows you to run applications in isolated containers.
• Users are the responsible members to update the Kubernetes versions of their clusters

EKS:

• AWS makes EKS an optimized AMI up to date with Kubernetes, but users are responsible to apply these changes to their clusters.
• AWS offers managed and self-managed nodes. The self-managed nodes behave like Azure, but the managed nodes follow a customizable procedure.

Conclusion

Kubernetes has evolved as the standard for container-based application orchestration. Its popularity could be due to its significant advantages, which includes portable, scalable, cost-effective and consistent deployment from the cloud, on-premises or hybrid settings.

While the choice to migrate to Kubernetes may eventually be self-evident, the migration timing necessitates a thorough grasp of the complex ecosystem of Kubernetes architecture and a business-specific assessment of whether your organization is ready to shift.

Get in touch for a free consultation