Azure Kubernetes Service update | Improve development experience and efficiency

Kubernetes for all developers

When developers need to create Kubernetes-based applications, they need to master a lot of related basic knowledge (such as containerization, Kubernetes configuration methods, and ingress, etc.), which increases the difficulty of getting started. Microsoft is committed to bringing the best Kubernetes development experience to developers when using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). We are very pleased to announce a series of basic features for AKS application development, allowing developers to rapidly deploy a non-containerized application with only source code to a Kubernetes cluster in minutes, while providing out-of-the-box secure web Application routing and there are many ways to extend your application.

Draft Visual Studio Code integration

▌Draft v2 integration experience (preview)

Draft is an open source project to simplify the Kubernetes development process. We released version 2 of Draft, addressing problems from code to containers to applications in the cloud. Draft can quickly generate containerization-related files such as Dockerfiles, Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, Kustomize configurations, and more for non-containerized applications. And generate GitHub Actions workflow files, making it easier for developers to quickly deploy applications to Kubernetes clusters. Microsoft is working hard to integrate the Draft experience into AKS. Developers can use the Azure CLI, Visual Studio Code, and integrate Draft with AKS through the Azure portal, obtain container images stored in Azure Container Registry from source code and GitHub Actions workflows, and build containerized applications with a few simple lines of commands Quick deployment to AKS cluster:

 git clone https://github.com/myrepo/ContosoAir
az aks draft create --destination ./ContosoAir
az aks draft generate-flow --destination ./ContosoAir
git push

▌Web Application Routing Plugin (Preview)

We are excited to announce the public preview of the Web Application Routing Plugin on AKS, the easiest way to get your web applications up and running securely in Kubernetes while reducing the need to manage ingress controllers, certificate management and the complexity of DNS configuration. This plugin provides an nginx-based managed ingress controller and integrates out of the box with Open Service Mesh (OSM) to secure intra-cluster communication using mutual TLS.

▌Scaling applications with Kubernetes-based event-driven autoscaling (KEDA) (preview)

The KEDA AKS extension provides a way to enable KEDA on an AKS cluster. Enable the KEDA add-in using the Azure CLI, which provides a fully supported installation of KEDA integrated with AKS. With KEDA AKS scaling enabled, deployments can be scaled down to 0 pods, reducing consumption when not needed. When there is new demand, KEDA activates deployments in response to incoming traffic.

Simplify the operator experience

▌Network update

HTTP proxy support is now available. By exposing a simple interface that operators can use to secure the network traffic required by AKS in proxy-dependent environments, allowing you to deploy clusters behind corporate proxies.
In cyberspace, Managed NAT Gateway integration is now available as the preferred egress choice for clusters. This allows up to 64,000 outbound UDP and TCP traffic per IP address for up to 16 IP addresses.
Dynamic allocation of pod IPs and pod subnets is now available, allowing for more granular control and efficiency of cluster IP space.

▌Cluster operation management

We wanted to ensure as much visibility and transparency as possible, so we started testing the AKS Release Tracker, where developers can monitor the status of AKS releases across Azure regions to find when new fixes or features are deployed. Releases will map directly to AKS release notes.

Alias minor version is now released. With this feature, you can create clusters and node pools without specifying the exact Kubernetes patch version. When a cluster is created without specifying a patch, the cluster will run the latest patch of the minor version.

▌Performance optimization

In terms of cluster performance optimization, custom node configurations are now available, which allow you to configure or adjust operating system settings or kubelet parameters to meet the needs of your workload.

With the release of Ampere-Altra Arm-based node support in AKS, you can now create Arm 64-bit Ubuntu agent nodes to mix Intel and Arm architecture nodes in a cluster. This can provide up to 50% better price/performance compared to x86-based virtual machines for scale-out workloads.

Windows Server 2022 offers new features and significant improvements over Windows Server 2019. With this new public preview feature, AKS now supports Windows Server 2022. Among other security-related optimizations, Windows Server 2022 also offers several platform improvements for Windows Containers and Kubernetes.

Adapting Kubernetes to Multiple Environments with Azure Arc

With Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, we're extending the Azure platform so you can build and run Kubernetes applications consistently across datacenter, edge, and multicloud environments.

▌Open Service Mesh released

The Open Service Mesh extension is now available for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters. This allows users to uniformly manage, secure, and gain out-of-the-box observability capabilities for highly dynamic microservice environments. The extension is lightweight, configures the service mesh interface API, and works by injecting an Envoy proxy as a sidecar into each application instance. The service mesh provides core capabilities such as mTLS traffic encryption between microservices, traffic splitting, access control policies, observability of application performance, and more.

▌Azure Key Vault Secret Provider Extension Released

The Azure Key Vault secret provider allows workloads on an Arc cluster to access keys, secrets, and certificates stored in Azure Key Vault. Using a centralized secret store instead of creating Kubernetes secrets locally on the cluster enhances the security profile of your application. Users can customize the polling interval for this extension based on the key rotation frequency enabled for Azure Key Vault, which defaults to 2 minutes.

▌GitOps with Flux v2 in Azure released

GitOps with Flux v2 in AKS and Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes is now available. Azure supports GitOps configuration and workload management for entire cloud and hybrid Kubernetes assets—clusters in AKS as well as clusters in on-premises or other public clouds. Flux v2 is a major update that brings Kubernetes-native architecture, observability, multi-tenancy, and more.

▌Azure Arc Jumpstart ArcBox for DevOps

As the number of Azure Arc customers continues to grow, Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes serves as the foundation for other Azure Arc services such as Data Services, Machine Learning, and App Services, and is integrated as the backbone of our new Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes Landing Zone Accelerator part.

Since we released Jumpstart ArcBox 2.0 and the new ITPro flavor in January, the amount of positive feedback and customer adoption has been impressive. The new ArcBox modular design makes it easy for us to bring new styles, and today we're excited to share our newest style with you - ArcBox for DevOps!

Azure Arc DevBox

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