Azure Kubernetes Service: Overview and Case Study

6 min readSep 26, 2021

Microsoft Azure, commonly referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing platform and an online portal that allows you to access and manage cloud services and resources provided by Microsoft. These services and resources include storing your data and transforming it, depending on your requirements. To get access to these resources and services, all you need to have is an active internet connection and the ability to connect to the Azure portal. These services and resources are mainly used for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers.

It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes, is a container management technology developed in Google lab to manage containerized applications in different kind of environments such as physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. It is an open source system which helps in creating and managing containerization of application.

Kubernetes is also known as K8s, is an open-source container-orchestration system for automating computer application deployment, scaling, and management.

Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Kubernetes Service is a managed container orchestration service based on the open source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. An organization can use AKS to handle critical functionality such as deploying, scaling and managing Docker containers and container-based applications.

An AKS cluster can be created using the Azure command-line interface (CLI), an Azure portal or Azure PowerShell. Users can also create template-driven deployment options with Azure Resource Manager templates.

AKS Features:

Easy integration with Azure services such as Load balancing, Azure Blob Storage, Azure managed Databases, etc
Hosted control plane
Easy and secure containerized applications management
Azure Active Directory integration for RBAC
AKS management service is free of charge

Azure Kubernetes Service Benefits

Azure Kubernetes Service is currently competing with both Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The following are some benefits offered by AKS:

Efficient resource utilization: The fully managed AKS offers easy deployment and management of containerized applications with efficient resource utilization that elastically provisions additional resources without the headache of managing the Kubernetes infrastructure.
Faster application development: Developers spent most of the time on bug-fixing. AKS reduces the debugging time while handling patching, auto-upgrades, and self-healing and simplifies the container orchestration. It definitely saves a lot of time and developers will focus on developing their apps while remaining more productive.
Security and compliance: Cybersecurity is one of the most important aspects of modern applications and businesses. AKS integrates with Azure Active Directory (AD) and offers on-demand access to the users to greatly reduce threats and risks. AKS is also completely compliant with the standards and regulatory requirements such as System and Organization Controls (SOC), HIPAA, ISO, and PCI DSS.
Quicker development and integration: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports auto-upgrades, monitoring, and scaling and helps in minimizing the infrastructure maintenance that leads to comparatively faster development and integration.

Use Cases of Azure Kubernetes Services

AKS is ideal for easy migration of the existing application to containers and running them.
AKS is also ideal for simplifying the deployment and management of applications based on microservices.
AKS is also a reliable instrument for bringing DevOps and Kubernetes together. AKS is ideal for secure DevOps implementation with Kubernetes and improves the speed and security of the development process.
Constant monitoring can also help in accelerating the feedback loop. Azure pipelines can help in faster delivery alongside compliance with critical policies specified by Azure.
Azure Kubernetes Service is also applicable in many other use cases. One of them is the ease of scaling by using AKS and Azure Container Instances. Also, you can find the applications of AKS for on-demand IoT device deployment and management.

Bosch using AKS

Robert Bosch GmbH, commonly known as Bosch, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 92% owned by Robert Bosch Stiftung, a charitable institution.

Problem Statement:

When Robert Bosch GmbH set out to solve the problem of drivers going the wrong way on highways, the goal was to save lives. Other services like this existed in Germany, but precision and speed cannot be compromised. Could Bosch get precise enough location data — in real time — to do this? The company knew it had to try.

How the solution worked:

The wrong-way driver warning solution runs as a service on Azure and provides an SDK. Service providers, such as smartphone app developers and OEM partners, can install the WDW SDK to make use of the service within their products. The SDK maintains a list of hotspots within which GPS data is collected anonymously. These hotspots include specific locations, such as segments of divided highways and on-ramps. Every time a driver enters a hotspot, the client generates a new ID, so the service remains anonymous.

When a driver using a WDW-configured app or in-car system enters a hotspot, the WDW SDK begins to collect GPS signals and sensor events, such as acceleration and rotational data and heading information. These data points are packaged as observations and sent in the frequency of 1 Hertz (Hz) — one event per second — via HTTP to the WDW service on Azure, either directly or to the service provider’s back end, and then to Azure. The SDK supports both routes so that service providers stay in charge of the data that is sent to the WDW system.

If the WDW service determines that the driver is going the wrong way within a hotspot, it sends a notification to the originating device and to other drivers in the vicinity who are also running an app with the WDW SDK.

Within the first AKS cluster, the following apps process the streaming data:

The ingest app receives the data from the gateway and stores it in MongoDB.
The detector app does the heavy lifting by matching the location data on a map and then making the initial decision about whether the trip is suspicious.
The alert validator app is a post-validation component used to verify the differing road characteristics of various countries.
The data pump is solely tasked to persist data in an asynchronous way.
The push registry app handles egress — the broadcast of the push notifications to the service providers. The WDW service supports Android, Google, and Apple push notifications and offers an option that service providers can use to configure custom alerts.

“What we like about AKS is the simplified Kubernetes experience. It’s click and deploy, it’s click and scale. It’s infrastructure as code too, which is quite cool for us.” — Christian Jeschke: product owner,Bosch

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