A recurring problem that we encounter:
“I have to work with Cloud Native Apps, but I don’t want to learn about kubernetes, OpenShift, ….”
Azure Container Apps is the solution to that problem
Azure Container Apps is a new player in the Azure containers ecosystem, launched in 2022, it is a managed serverless container service which offers an ideal platform for application developers who want to run microservices in containers without managing infrastructure.
Behind the scenes, every container app runs on Azure Kubernetes Service, with KEDA, Dapr, and Envoy baked in.
Distinctive features of Container Apps over other container solutions in Azure include:
- Optimized for running general purpose containers, especially for applications that span many microservices deployed in containers.
- Powered by Kubernetes and open-source technologies like Dapr, KEDA, and envoy.
- Supports Kubernetes-style apps and microservices with features like service discovery and traffic splitting.
- Enables event-driven application architectures by supporting scale based on traffic and pulling from event sources like queues, including scale to zero.
- Support of long running processes and can run background tasks.
Other features of Container Apps:
-
- Environment: Individual container apps are deployed to a single Container Apps environment, which acts as a secure boundary around groups of container apps
- Revisions: Azure Container Apps implements container app versioning by creating revisions. A revision is an immutable snapshot of a container app version.
- Support foundation for deploying microservices featuring:
- Independent scaling, versioning, and upgrades
- Service discovery
- Native Dapr integration
- Support for external (public endpoint), internal (no public endpoint) and custom VNETs
- Easy Auth built-in
- Azure Container Apps provides several built-in observability features that together give you a holistic view of your container app’s health throughout its application lifecycle: Log Streaming, Container console and fully integration with Azure Monitor.
- Application lifecycle management based in revisions:
Conclusion
So, if you don’t need to access Kubernetes API and you are working in Cloud Native Apps, Azure Container Apps is your service in Azure.
And if you don’t know what you want, you can always find the Azure service that you need:
| If you want to | Use this |
|---|---|
| Deploy and scale containers on managed Kubernetes | Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) |
| Deploy and scale containers on managed Red Hat OpenShift | Azure Red Hat OpenShift |
| Build and deploy modern apps and microservices using serverless containers | Azure Container Apps |
| Execute event-driven, serverless code with an end-to-end development experience | Azure Functions |
| Run containerized web apps on Windows and Linux | Web App for Containers |
| Launch containers with hypervisor isolation | Container Instances |
| Deploy and operate always-on, scalable, distributed apps | Service Fabric |
| Build, store, secure and replicate container images and artifacts | Container Registry |
References:
- Container services: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/category/containers/
- Microservices on Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/solutions/microservice-applications/#overview
- Azure Container Apps Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/
Cloud Architect at Keepler: "I do things in Azure. The most important thing in my life is my family and friends. I like the beach, the countryside, a good meeting with friends, doing some sport and technology."