14 posts tagged with "Developer"

Stateful workloads on Kubernetes continue to demand not only faster performance but also larger scale and more streamlined operational simplicity. Azure Container Storage v2.1.0 is now generally available with three headline improvements:

Elastic SAN (ESAN) integration: consolidate hundreds of persistent volumes under a single managed ESAN, bypassing VM disk-attachment limits

Modular on-demand installation: deploy only the components your chosen storage type requires, reducing install time and cluster footprint

Node selector support: control where Azure Container Storage components run so you can optimize resource usage across node pools

Agent skills for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) bring production-grade AKS guidance, troubleshooting checklists, and guardrails directly into any compatible AI agent. The first set of skills are now available through the GitHub Copilot for Azure extension, with support for VS Code, Visual Studio, Copilot CLI, and Claude.

While AI agents already carry a good baseline of Kubernetes and AKS knowledge, that knowledge is only as current as their training data and varies across models. Skills enhance agents with prescriptive, up-to-date guidance on the tools and processes our AKS engineers use today to make the right AKS decisions across cluster creation, operations, and issue resolution.

Deploying applications to AKS Automatic with Terraform requires a different authentication approach than traditional AKS clusters. AKS Automatic uses Azure RBAC exclusively, which means you can't download a kubeconfig file with static credentials. This post explores options for configuring the Helm provider to work with AKS Automatic—or any AKS cluster using Azure RBAC—using Azure CLI, service principals, or managed identities.

We're pleased to share the newly updated guidance on deploying PostgreSQL with CloudNativePG on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Introduction​

Last year we announced the general availability of Azure Container Storage, the industry’s first platform-managed container native storage service in the public cloud. This solution delivers high performance and scalable storage that can effectively meet the demands of containerized environments. Today we are announcing a new v2.0.0 release of Azure Container Storage for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). It builds on the foundation of previous release and takes it further by focusing on higher performance, lower latency, efficient resource management and a Kubernetes native user experience for managing stateful workloads on AKS.

Overview​

In this blog, we'll guide you through setting up an OpenAI API compatible inference endpoint with llm-d and integrating with retrieval- augmented generation (RAG) on AKS. This blog will showcase its value in a key finance use case: indexing the latest SEC 10-K filings for the two S&P 500 companies and querying them. We’ll also highlight the benefits of llm-d based on its architecture and its synergy with RAG.

We're excited to announce the launch of the AKS-MCP Server. An open source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server designed to make your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters AI-native and more accessible for developers, SREs, and platform engineers through Agentic AI workflows.

AKS-MCP isn't just another integration layer. It empowers cutting-edge AI assistants (such as Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot) to interact with AKS through a secure, standards-based protocol—opening new possibilities for automation, observability, and collaborative cloud operations.

What are Kubernetes Extensions?​

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.

Temporal is an open source platform that helps developers build and scale resilient Enterprise and AI applications. Complex and long-running processes are easily orchestrated with durable execution, ensuring they never fail or lose state. Every step is tracked in an Event History that lets developers easily observe and debug applications. In this guide, we will help you understand how to run and scale your workers on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

PostgreSQL is one of the most popular stateful workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Thanks to the support of a vibrant community, we now have a strong PostgreSQL operator ecosystem that makes it easier for everyone to self-host PostgreSQL on Kubernetes.

Kube Resource Orchestrator introduces a Kubernetes-native, cloud-agnostic way to define groupings of Kubernetes resources. With kro, you can group your applications and their dependencies as a single resource that can be easily consumed by end users.

Just as we collaborate in upstream Kubernetes, Azure is partnering with AWS and Google Cloud on kro (pronounced “crow”) to make Kubernetes APIs simpler for all Kubernetes users. We’re centering the needs of customers and the cloud native community to offer tooling that works seamlessly no matter where you run your K8s clusters.

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).

Last May, we announced the preview of Azure Container Storage with backing storage options including Ephemeral Disks, Azure Disks, and Azure Elastic SAN. Earlier today we announced the general availability of Azure Container Storage, the industry’s first platform-managed container native storage service in the public cloud providing highly scalable storage that can keep up with the demands of a containerized environment. With this announcement, Azure Disks and Ephemeral Disks are now generally available, while Azure Elastic SAN remains in preview and is expected to reach general availability soon. In this post, we'll explore the benefits of Azure Container Storage, the inspirations behind its development, and the new features in the GA release.

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.