Microsoft Azure Deepens Kubernetes Support

Microsoft Azure has extended its support for Kubernetes and the Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System to provide either as container orchestration options, along with Docker Swarm.

The set of updates, announced this week at KubeCon, includes a preview release of Kubernetes 1.4 on Azure Container Service (ACS), support for DC/OS version 1.8.4, and the release of the ACS Engine source code.

Microsoft Azure director of compute Corey Sanders said in a blog post that Azure is the first public cloud provider to support all three leading container orchestration tools.

Kubernetes has been supported by Azure infrastructure since 2014, but it is now deeper and native. A functional Kubernetes cluster integrated with other Azure resources can now be created from the Azure portal or Azure’s new python-based command line tool. The new version of DC/OS includes flexible virtual networking capabilities, job scheduling, and Marathon-based container orchestration from the user interface, and a number of tools have been added to the DC/OS Universe app store.

The ACS Engine source code has also been released to GitHub to encourage modification and customization.

“We are seeing organizations of every size move their container-based solutions from dev/test environments to production in the cloud, especially as they discover the business agility opportunities containers make possible. In addition to delivering more choice and flexibility on ACS, we’re also enabling more streamlined agile development and container management through new updates,” wrote Sanders.

One streamlining initiative is the Docker Registry v2 compatible Azure Container Registry, which will be available in preview next week, allowing Docker-formatted images for different types of container deployments. At the same time Microsoft will release a continuous integration and deployment tool for multicontainer Linux applications using Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and the related open source code. The post also says Microsoft will “invest heavily” in development and CI/CD tools for container workloads.

A blog post by Microsoft partner architect Brendan Burns includes a video demonstrating Kubernetes on Azure Container Service.

As service providers gear up for enterprise adoption of containers, OnApp launched Container Servers supporting Docker or Kubernetes as a beta feature in its version 5.1 last month.

This article first appeared here at The Whir.