🚀 Day 18 of #100DaysOfCloud – Getting Started with AKS: Pods, Nodes, Autoscaling & Ingress Controllers

As part of my work with containerized applications in the cloud, I’ve had the opportunity to dive into Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)—Microsoft’s managed Kubernetes offering. Today, I’m sharing the fundamentals around how AKS works and the key building blocks that make it scalable and production-ready.

🔹 What is AKS?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies the deployment, management, and operations of Kubernetes clusters in Azure. It eliminates the need to manage the control plane, letting you focus on your applications.

🧱 Understanding Nodes and Pods

• Nodes: These are the virtual machines (VMs) in your AKS cluster. Each node runs one or more pods and includes the Kubernetes agent (kubelet) that handles communication with the Kubernetes control plane.
• Pods: The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes. A pod encapsulates one or more containers, storage resources, and network configuration. Each pod runs on a node.

🎯 In one of my projects, each microservice (e.g., user-service, payment-service) ran inside its own pod for better isolation and scaling control.

📈 When and How to Use Autoscaling in AKS

To maintain performance and optimize cost, autoscaling is key.

Types of autoscaling in AKS:

1. Cluster Autoscaler: Automatically adds/removes nodes based on pod resource requirements. Useful when your workloads grow beyond available node capacity.
2. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA): Automatically increases or decreases the number of pod replicas based on CPU/memory usage or custom metrics.
3. KEDA (Kubernetes-based Event-Driven Autoscaling): Ideal for event-driven apps. It scales based on external metrics (e.g., Azure Queue, Kafka messages).

🔧 Example from my work: We used HPA for a containerized .NET web app where traffic fluctuated during peak banking hours—keeping user experience fast without overprovisioning.

🌐 What are Ingress and Egress Controllers?

• Ingress Controller: Manages external access to services inside your cluster, typically via HTTP/HTTPS. It routes traffic to the correct service based on URL paths or domains.
• Egress Controller/NAT Gateway: Controls and secures outbound traffic from your AKS cluster to the internet. Useful when AKS needs to access external services securely with static IPs.

✅ We configured an Ingress Controller with an Azure Application Gateway to expose a multi-tenant web app behind a single IP, securing it with SSL.

💡 Key Takeaways

• AKS makes Kubernetes easy to deploy and scale in Azure.
• Pods are where your app containers live; nodes are the VMs running those pods.
• Use autoscaling (HPA, Cluster Autoscaler, KEDA) to match resource demand dynamically.
• Ingress and Egress controllers handle traffic flow—crucial for secure and scalable web access.

💬 Let me know if you’re working with AKS or exploring container orchestration!

#AKS #AzureKubernetes #Containers #DevOps #Azure #Kubernetes #Ingress #CloudEngineering #100DaysOfCloud #Day18