Cloud Pro: Azure Containers: Choose, Compare and Launch

What's inside

1. Level 1: Every Azure Container Service on One PageFree
   Build a one-page map of Azure's container services: Kubernetes (AKS Standard and Automatic), serverless containers (Container Apps), single containers (Container Instances), PaaS (App Service), OpenShift (ARO), registries (ACR), hybrid (Arc) and security (Defender), with their current and former names and how to check what is retiring.
2. Level 2: The Standard Container Workload ProfileFree
   Capture a workload in a standard profile that drives every later decision: number of services, stateless or stateful, traffic shape and scaling, GPUs, the Kubernetes skills and operating model your team can keep up, portability, compliance and cost model.
3. Level 3: AKS Standard: Managed Kubernetes You Run
   Work through Azure Kubernetes Service Standard in nine parts: what it is, fit, dated limits, pricing tiers and node costs, the shared responsibility split, pros and cons, real uses, and a CLI plus Bicep or Terraform quick start with clean-up.
4. Level 4: AKS Automatic: Opinionated Kubernetes
   Assess AKS Automatic, where Azure preconfigures node management, scaling, security and networking, and decide when its guardrails help a team and when they get in the way.
5. Level 5: Node Pools and Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager
   Use system and user node pools, spot pools, GPU pools and Windows pools to separate workloads, and use Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager to coordinate upgrades and placement across many clusters.
6. Level 6: Azure Container Apps: Serverless Apps
   Work through Container Apps for long-running apps in nine parts: environments, revisions, ingress, scale to zero, consumption pricing in vCPU-seconds, GiB-seconds and requests, limits, operating split, and a CLI plus Bicep or Terraform quick start.
7. Level 7: Container Apps Jobs and Workload Profiles
   Run manual, scheduled and event-driven jobs in Container Apps, and choose between the Consumption profile and dedicated workload profiles, including GPU profiles, for each part of a workload.
8. Level 8: Dapr and KEDA in Container Apps
   Use KEDA scale rules and Dapr building blocks the way Container Apps manages them, and see where the managed versions differ from running the same projects yourself on AKS.
9. Level 9: Azure Container Instances: Single Containers
   Work through Azure Container Instances in nine parts: container groups, per-second billing, Spot and confidential options, VNet injection, dated limits, and a CLI plus Bicep or Terraform quick start.
10. Level 10: App Service for Containers
    Assess Web App for Containers on Linux and Windows plans: deployment slots, sidecar containers, App Service Plan pricing, limits and when this PaaS beats a container-native service.
11. Level 11: Azure Red Hat OpenShift
    Work through Azure Red Hat OpenShift in nine parts: the jointly operated service, minimum cluster size, licence and infrastructure costs, the developer tools it adds, limits, and a CLI quick start with clean-up.
12. Level 12: Azure Container Registry
    Run Azure Container Registry for production: the Basic, Standard and Premium tiers, geo-replication, private endpoints, ACR Tasks, caching, retention and the limits and costs that grow with your image count.
13. Level 13: Arc-enabled Kubernetes and Defender for Containers
    Cover Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes briefly for clusters running outside Azure, and Defender for Containers for posture, vulnerability scanning and runtime protection, including how each is priced and what each does not do.
14. Level 14: Cluster and Node Pool Design
    Design production AKS clusters: how many clusters to run, isolation by environment or team, VM sizing, availability zones, system pool sizing, OS choices and the blast radius trade-offs teams usually find out about the hard way.
15. Level 15: Autoscaling Pods and Nodes
    Combine pod autoscaling (HPA, VPA, KEDA) with node autoscaling (cluster autoscaler or node auto-provisioning) and tune them to balance speed, stability and cost.
16. Level 16: Upgrades and Maintenance Windows
    Plan Kubernetes version and node image upgrades with release channels, planned maintenance windows, surge settings and fleet-wide rollout, while tracking AKS version support and deprecated APIs.
17. Level 17: Container Networking Models
    Choose a pod networking model on Azure: Azure CNI Overlay, flat Azure CNI, Cilium dataplane and network policy, IP address planning, and the move away from kubenet and other retiring options.
18. Level 18: Ingress, Gateways and Egress
    Bring traffic into and out of container platforms with the application routing add-on, Application Gateway for Containers, Gateway API, Front Door and controlled egress, and check the support status of each controller.
19. Level 19: Stateful Workloads and Storage
    Run stateful containers safely: CSI drivers for Azure Disks, Files and Blob, Azure Container Storage, zone-aware volumes, backup with AKS Backup, and when to use a managed database instead.
20. Level 20: Workload Identity and Secrets
    Remove stored credentials from containers with Microsoft Entra Workload ID and managed identities, and deliver secrets from Key Vault across AKS, Container Apps and App Service, replacing retired pod identity patterns.
21. Level 21: Securing the Image Supply Chain
    Build a trusted path from source to running image: scan, sign and attach SBOMs to images in Azure Container Registry, then make clusters and apps refuse images that fail those checks.
22. Level 22: Runtime Security and Hardening
    Protect workloads while they run, using Defender for Containers runtime detection, pod security standards, network policy and least-privilege container settings across each Azure container service.
23. Level 23: GitOps Delivery with Flux and Argo CD
    Make Git the source of truth for cluster and app state, and weigh the AKS GitOps (Flux) extension against running Argo CD yourself, including repository layout and multi-cluster rollout through Fleet Manager.
24. Level 24: Progressive Rollout and Safe Releases
    Ship changes gradually and roll them back safely with canary and blue-green releases: Container Apps revision traffic splitting, App Service deployment slots and Kubernetes progressive delivery tools.
25. Level 25: Observability: Metrics, Logs and Traces
    Build production observability with Azure Monitor Container Insights, managed Prometheus, Azure Managed Grafana and OpenTelemetry, and keep log ingestion costs under control.
26. Level 26: Worked Cost Comparison: Two Workloads
    Price two contrasting workloads (a steady multi-service API and a bursty event-driven batch job) across AKS, AKS Automatic, Container Apps, Container Instances and App Service using dated example prices and every cost lever covered in the course.
27. Level 27: The Weighted Selection Scorecard
    Turn the Level 2 workload profile into a weighted scorecard: criteria, weights, must-pass gates and evidence-backed scores that rank the Azure container services for a given workload.
28. Level 28: Scoring Azure Against Another Cloud
    Apply the same scorecard to the equivalent services on another cloud (for example EKS, ECS, Fargate and App Runner on AWS, or GKE and Cloud Run on Google Cloud) using dated, sourced evidence.
29. Level 29: Launch and Migration Paths
    Plan the route into production for the chosen service, and the routes between services, for example App Service to Container Apps, Container Apps to AKS, self-managed Kubernetes to AKS Automatic, or OpenShift to ARO, including any retiring features.
30. Level 30: Final Challenge: Decision Workshop Exam
    Run a full decision workshop on a realistic scenario, drawing on the whole course from the service map to the cross-cloud scores, and produce a one-page selection record that can be defended.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

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