Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) — Maersk Case Study
Containers are the new way through which we launch our applications these days. To manage these large clusters of container hosts we need a management tool , thus comes kubernetes in picture.
Kubernetes is by far the most popular container orchestration tool, yet the complexities of managing the tool have led to the rise of fully-managed Kubernetes services over the past few years. Managed Kubernetes, or Kubernetes as a Service, is an easy way to deploy applications to the cloud that minimizes the difficulty and IT costs associated with running and managing your own Kubernetes cluster.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed container platform that simplifies the process of deploying your containerized applications. Azure manages all the complex parts of running Kubernetes, and you can focus on your containers. AKS will give your organization the following advantages:
- Production-ready Kubernetes platform
- Reduced IT and management overhead
- Automated deployments with Helm
- Easier cluster upgrades
- CI/CD pipelines with Azure DevOps
- Kubernetes RBAC and Azure Active Directory Integration
- Enforce rules defined in Azure Policy across multiple clusters
- Kubernetes can scale your Nodes using cluster autoscaler
- Secure image storage with Azure Container Registry
Maersk — Case Study
Headquartered in Copenhagen, A.P. Moller — Maersk moves things — a lot of things to a lot of places. It’s the biggest container-shipping company in the world. Shipping is a physical activity, but the company decided to make its operations increasingly digital.
As part of its digital transformation efforts, shipping giant A.P. Moller — Maersk needed to streamline IT operations and optimize the value of its IT resources. Maersk adopted Microsoft Azure, migrated key workloads to the cloud, and modernized its open-source software, which included the adoption of Kubernetes on Azure. Maersk software engineers now spend less time on container software management and more time on innovation and value-added projects. The resulting business value is savings on resource costs, faster solution delivery time, and the ability to attract expert IT talent.
“We want to focus on using containers as a way to package and run our code in the cloud, not focus on the software required to construct and run the containers.Using Kubernetes on Azure satisfies our objectives for efficient software development.”
-Rasmus Hald: Head of Cloud Architecture
A.P. Moller — Maersk
As part of its overall cloud migration strategy, Maersk chose Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to handle the automation and management of its containerized applications. (A containerized application is portable runtime software that is packaged with the dependencies and configuration files it needs in order to run, all in one place.) AKS fully supports the dynamic application environment in Maersk without requiring orchestration expertise.
With increased time and talent, Maersk engineers were able to address customer requests by adding additional shipment monitoring capabilities to the company’s portfolio of solutions. Namely, they are in the process of building an Internet of Things (IoT) solution that will use AKS along with Azure IoT Hub to more closely monitor shipments and physical shipping containers (not to be confused with software containers governed by AKS), including conditions within the containers.
