2.2.5 Describe Azure Containers

Description of Azure containers.

What are Containers?

Containers are a virtualization environment. Multiple containers can be run on a single physical or virtual host. You don't manage the OS for a container. VMs are an instance of an OS that you can connect to and manage. Containers are lightweight and designed to be created, scaled and stopped dynamically. Containers allow you to respond to changes on demand. One of the most popular container engines is Docker, and Azure supports Docker.

Azure Container Instances

Azure Containers are a PaaS offering, Azure Container Instances allow you to upload containers which the service will then run for you.

Azure Container Apps

These allow you to get up and running immediately, they remove the container management piece and are a PaaS offering. These allow you to incorporate load balancing and scaling.

Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a container orchestration service. This manages the lifecycle of containers. AKS makes fleet management simpler and more efficient.

Use Containers in your Solutions

Containers are often used to create solutions using a microservice architecture. This is where you break solutions into smaller pieces. For example, a website might be broken into a container for the front end, a container for the back end and a container for storage. Containers would allow you to scale the back-end separately to improve performance.