Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) has grown to be a preferred tool for companies deploying container-based modern applications. AKS being a Kubernetes-as-a-service platform, AKS takes care of most challenges of managing the Kubernetes control plane. However, managed does not mean zero maintenance – creating an AKS cluster is quite different from making it production ready.
There is more to production workloads compared to an operational cluster. They call for solid architecture design, security practices, consistent scalability, observability, resilience and good operations.
This is where the Azure Consulting team can come in handy. Production readiness assessment is more about checking whether the app is able to operate in production and less about checking whether it works in AKS.
Here are some of the key areas that should be verified before going to production with your AKS workload.
1.Verify AKS Architecture
The first step towards production readiness is architecture.
The AKS architecture should be designed according to the availability, performance, security and scalability needs of the application. The design of the cluster, node pools, network and workload isolation should be made thoughtfully rather than following any defaults.
Verification of:
- AKS architecture for the application
- Strategy for Region and Availability Zones
- Node pool requirements for system/user
- Requests and limits for resources
- Workload isolation
- Autoscaling needs
- Development, Staging, and Production environment segregation
2.Design Networking for Scalability and Security
Network design issues that arise early in an AKS deployment have a lot of implications.
During the production readiness assessment, the organization should evaluate the whole process of traffic flow from the user and outside systems to the ingress, workloads, database and other Azure services.
The critical aspects to consider include:
- Designing of virtual networks and subnets
- IP address pool
- Azure CNI setup
- Network Policies
- Ingress and Load-balancing architecture
- Private/public access to cluster
- Outbound traffic control
- DNS and services communication
The crucial issue here is whether the organization can describe how traffic flows into and out of their AKS environment.
3.Improve Identification and Secrets Management
Identification is an integral part of AKS Security.
In the production environment, Microsoft Entra ID must be included and role-based access controls on the principle of least privilege must be applied. It is important to separate administrative access, developer access and identities of workloads.
When it comes to application access to Azure resources, Microsoft Entra Workload ID or Managed Identities can be utilized to get rid of long-term secrets.
Secrets management needs the same discipline. Database credentials, API keys, certificates and connection strings should not be hard-coded into code, images of containers or unencrypted configuration files.
Azure Key Vault together with identity technologies can be a solution here.
4.Secure Container Supply Chain
AKS security starts even before the container is loaded into the cluster.
Thus, production readiness must also take into account the software supply chain, from dependencies to container images and their deployments.
Some aspects include:
- Vulnerability scanning of container images
- Trusted container repositories
- Scanning for dependencies and packages
- Signing of images
- Azure Policy
- Microsoft Defender for Containers
- Privileged workload restrictions
- Non-root container executions where possible
- Patching base images regularly
The goal is to create a continuous security journey from code to container to cluster and not a last-minute one.
5.Make Observability Actionable
An observability platform has to signal to its users that something is broken, and give enough context to understand why.
Observability of AKS includes monitoring of infrastructure, Kubernetes resources and applications via metrics, logs and traces.
Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Managed Prometheus, Grafana and Application Insights may be used in observability.
But simply collecting telemetry data is not enough. One should set up:
- Service level objectives (SLOs)
- Meaningful alerts
- Alert ownership
- Dashboards for critical services
- Incident management process
- Run books
Good observability converts monitoring from “something is broken” to “this service is degrading, this is why, and this is how we should react.”
6.AKS Scaling and Performance Testing
Traffic patterns in production don’t match traffic patterns during development.
AKS services should be tested under realistic load conditions in order to see how applications and infrastructure respond under typical load conditions and in case of sudden changes in demand.
Validate:
- Configuration of Horizontal Pod Autoscaler
- Behavior of Cluster Autoscaler
- Resource requests/limits
- Pod Disruption Budgets
- Readiness/Liveness Probes
- Node capacity
- Application latency
- Databases and other dependencies
Scaling also needs to be based on real-world workload characteristics for the application. CPU usage may be right for one application; something else – queue size or rate of requests – might be right for another.
The issue is not whether AKS will scale; the issue is whether the entire application will scale.
7.Design for Failure and Recovery
High availability does not inherently imply resilience.
Production AKS environments should have pre-defined reactions to situations where nodes, applications, deployments, and even entire AZs or regions fail.
Critical production workloads could demand multi-regional architecture, while any production environment should ensure proper backup as well as recovery strategies.
Two criteria can influence decision-making in this case:
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): What amount of data is acceptable to be lost?
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): What is the necessary speed of service restoration?
The most important thing is that backup strategies should be tested. Otherwise, there is nothing to speak about.
8.Ensure Upgrades and Operations Discipline
Kubernetes development continues to evolve over time. Upgrades in AKS, therefore, must be considered as part of the lifecycle of the platform rather than just a one-off activity.
Key areas for production upgrades include:
- Supported version of Kubernetes
- Checks for compatibility of applications and addons
- Validation before going into production
- Maintenance windows
- Node images
- Upgrades monitoring
- Rollbacks or remediation process
Operations should also be automated as much as possible. IaC, CI/CD pipelines, Git-based configurations and security checks minimize configuration drifts and increase environment repeatability.
It’s highly undesirable for a production platform to rely on an engineer knowing the necessary commands to create it again.
9.Consider the Costs in the Readiness Assessment
The cost of cloud is an architecture issue, not just a financial one.
There may be higher AKS costs due to oversized nodes, excess resource request, underutilization, unnecessary logging, inefficient autoscaling or inefficient storage and networking.
Companies need to:
- Right size the resources
- Have cost management and allocation
- Set right autoscaling limits
- Establish log retention
- Get cost visibility by workload
What we don’t want is cutting down on costs at all costs.
What we need is the perfect mix of cost, performance, availability and resiliency.
Conclusion
AKS can serve as an excellent platform for application delivery in today’s world, but being ready for production means much more than just having success with the deployment of containers.
A well-prepared for production AKS system consists of many elements: architecture, security, monitoring, scaling, resilience, automation, and cost management.
Here is where an experienced Azure Consulting can be of great use to any company looking for ways to go from just having a Kubernetes system to being able to operate on it. There is a good Azure Services Company which can help you identify gaps in your architecture, prioritize risks, and adopt practices for AKS.
