Last week the KubeCon / CloudNativeCon North America took place in Detroit with a lot of news regarding Azure Kubernetes Service. Let us now walk through what has been announced for AKS.
Microsoft further enhances the different CNI options that are available for Azure Kubernetes Service. Besides the standard of Azure CNI with Azure Network Policy Manager or Calico for Kubernetes network policies, the bring your own CNI option was introduced recently. At KubeCon North America Microsoft announced the preview of Azure CNI powered by Cilium as the next choice you have at your hand.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-cni-powered-by-cilium?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-networking-blog/azure-cni-powered-by-cilium-for-azure-kubernetes-service-aks/ba-p/3662341?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/azure-cni-powered-by-cilium?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
After the DNS resolution issues caused by a race-condition bug in an Ubuntu security update back in August 2022, everyone must have been relieved seeing the announcement of Microsoft’s own container-optimized OS called Mariner.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-mariner-container-optimized-os?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://microsoft.github.io/CBL-Mariner/docs/#key-capabilities-of-cbl-mariner-linux
Kubernetes offers three auto-scaling functionalities out of the box the cluster autoscaler, the horizontal pod autoscaler, and the vertical pod autoscaler. The latter one the vertical pod autoscaler was the one still missing to be supported natively by Azure Kubernetes Service and is now available in preview.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-vertical-pod-autoscaler?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/vertical-pod-autoscaler?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
The kube-proxy component in Kubernetes can be configured with two different backends for the load balancing iptables and IPVS. Finally, support for IPVS on Azure Kubernetes Service has been launched as a public preview. IPVS provides more configuration options and better performance in high-scale scenarios.
-> https://www.tigera.io/blog/comparing-kube-proxy-modes-iptables-or-ipvs/
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-ipvs-load-balancer-support-in-aks?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/configure-kube-proxy?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
Besides all the previously mentioned goodies Kubernetes 1.25 is now available in public preview for Azure Kubernetes Service and Ubuntu 22.04 support has been brought to general availability for AKS and will be the default OS for Ubuntu-based nodes once Kubernetes 1.25 is generally available for Azure Kubernetes Service.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-k8s-125-support?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-aks-support-for-ubuntu-2204?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
One hidden gem at the end that is worth mentioning. Microsoft will launch support for Kata Containers on AKS as a limited preview soon. Kata Containers allows you to sandbox containers to minimize the risk of running untrusted workloads on your Kubernetes cluster.