AKS built-in or optional platform add-ons and managed integrations.
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When running globally distributed public applications in Kubernetes, having access to a global traffic management solution is critical to ensuring high availability and security at the edge. Fortunately, Azure Front Door provides an easy-to-use global traffic routing capability, with integrated Content Delivery Network and Web Application Firewall.
Developing applications for Kubernetes can mean a lot of time spent waiting and relatively little time spent writing code. Whenever you want to test your code changes in the cluster, you usually have to build your application, deploy it to the cluster, and attach a remote debugger (or add a bunch of logs). These iterations can be incredibly time-consuming. Thankfully, there is a way to bridge the gap between your local environment and a remote cluster, making them feel seamlessly connected. mirrord, which can be used as a plugin for VSCode or IntelliJ or directly in the CLI, is an open-source tool that does exactly that (and much more).
You may have heard of the Kubernetes AI Toolchain Operator (KAITO) announced at Ignite 2023 and KubeCon Europe this year. The open source project has gained popularity in recent months by introducing a streamlined approach to AI model deployment and flexible infrastructure provisioning on Kubernetes.
With the v0.3.0 release, KAITO has expanded the supported model library to include the Phi-3 model, but the biggest (and most exciting) addition is the ability to fine-tune open-source models. Why should you be excited about fine-tuning? Well, it’s because fine-tuning is one way of giving your foundation model additional training using a specific dataset to enhance accuracy, which ultimately improves the interaction with end-users. (Another way to increase model accuracy is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which we touch on briefly in this section, coming soon to KAITO).
Kubernetes extensions (or cluster extensions) are pre-packaged applications that simplify the installation and lifecycle management of Azure capabilities on Kubernetes clusters. Examples include Azure Backup, GitOps (Flux), and Azure Machine Learning. Third-party extensions (or Kubernetes apps), such as Datadog AKS Cluster Extension and Isovalent Cilium Enterprise, are also available in the Azure Marketplace.
Workloads deployed on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster often need to access Azure backing resources, such as Azure Key Vault, databases, or AI services like Azure OpenAI Service. Users are required to manually configure Microsoft Entra Workload ID or Managed Identities so their AKS workloads can securely access these protected resources.