Cluster operator and developer best practices to build and manage applications on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Building and running applications successfully in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) requires understanding and implementation of some key concepts, including:

  • Multi-tenancy and scheduler features.
  • Cluster and pod security.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery.

The AKS product group, engineering teams, and field teams (including global black belts (GBBs)) contributed to, wrote, and grouped the following best practices and conceptual articles. Their purpose is to help cluster operators and developers better understand the concepts above and implement the appropriate features.

Cluster operator best practices

If you're a cluster operator, work with application owners and developers to understand their needs. Then, you can use the following best practices to configure your AKS clusters to fit your needs.

An important practice that you should include as part of your application development and deployment process is remembering to follow commonly used deployment and testing patterns. Testing your application before deployment is an important step to ensure its quality, functionality, and compatibility with the target environment. It can help you identify and fix any errors, bugs, or issues that might affect the performance, security, or usability of the application or underlying infrastructure.

Multi-tenancy

Security

Network and storage

Running enterprise-ready workloads

Developer best practices

If you're a developer or application owner, you can simplify your development experience and define required application performance features.

Kubernetes and AKS concepts

The following conceptual articles cover some of the fundamental features and components for clusters in AKS: