Azure Container Management Solutions – Product Brief

Customers considering the use of Microsoft Azure solutions to build out and manage a new Kubernetes architecture have much to consider. Microsoft Azure has a broad set of options for creating Kubernetes solutions. Whether the buyer is considering a container management platform to manage with his/her own staff, a container management service managed by Azure, on-premises, hybrid, multi-cloud, fast path to AI/ML or data analytics and/or leveraging containers at the edge, there is at least one solution (and often several) in the Azure suite. Determining the right solution can be a challenge. This guide will walk through the primary options, outlining the key issues and considerations. Like other cloud service providers, Microsoft Azure delivers its Kubernetes solutions while leveraging a number of proprietary operational capabilities from the Azure cloud to manage, secure and add value to Kubernetes orchestrated clusters based on hardened open-source code. This results in a solution which inherits Azure’s strengths in security, governance, and ease of use. It also means the offering is highly portable at the cluster layer, but less so from a management control plane and application perspective.

A deeper discussion of functionality follows, but, in general, Azure offers three distinct Kubernetes solutions which each have different values, and which can be packaged together. These solutions are:

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), a managed service for Kubernetes-orchestrated clusters running directly in the Azure cloud
• Azure Arc, a managed service to provide unified cluster management and governance across on Kubernetes clusters deployed on-premises, across multi-cloud and edge
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI and Windows 2019 Datacenter, a software platform based on AKS (and maintained by Azure) which allows a customer to operate basic Kubernetes services provided by AKS on a standalone customer environment.

Azure Container Management Solutions Product Brief Includes: 

• Overview
• Highlights
• Usage and Deployment
• EvaluScale Product Review Methodology
• Evaluator Group Opinion

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