Last month the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe took place in Amsterdam with a lot of news regarding Azure Kubernetes Service. Let us now walk through some of the highlights that have been announced for Azure Kubernetes Service.
A lot of networking news has been made at KubeCon Europe. Starting with the general availability of the Azure CNI Overlay feature that addresses the IP address exhaustion issue that is present with the traditional Azure CNI plugin.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azurecnioverlay?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/azure-cni-overlay?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
Besides that Istio is now available in public preview as an AKS add-on which means you get a managed Istio on Azure Kubernetes Service.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-aks-service-mesh-addon-for-istio?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/istio-based-service-mesh-add-on-for-azure-kubernetes-service/ba-p/3800229?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/istio-deploy-addon?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
Another milestone has been the announcement of the public preview of Cilium Enterprise via the Azure Marketplace. Cilium Enterprise can be installed with just a few clicks on new Azure Kubernetes Service clusters or existing Azure Kubernetes Service clusters running Azure CNI powered by Cilium.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/ciliumenterpriseonazuremarketplace?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://isovalent.com/blog/post/isovalent-cilium-enterprise-microsoft-azure-marketplace/
Long awaited and now finally generally available is Azure Active Directory Workload Identity for Azure Kubernetes Service. AAD Workload Identity enables Kubernetes pods to securely access Azure services in your subscription.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/ga-azure-active-directory-workload-identity-with-aks-2?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/general-availability-for-azure-active-directory-ad-workload/ba-p/3798292?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/workload-identity-overview?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
A very interesting approach that I would have rather seen driven by the community itself is Microsoft’s approach offering long-term support for Kubernetes versions in Azure Kubernetes Service.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-long-term-support-version-in-aks?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/azure-kubernetes-upgrades-and-long-term-support/ba-p/3782789?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
Other highlights have been the announcement of the OpenCost integration, Kata confidential containers, and the general availability of Kubernetes 1.26 on Azure Kubernetes Service.
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/opencost-for-aks-cost-visibility?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/leverage-opencost-on-azure-kubernetes-service-to-understand-and/ba-p/3796813?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-confidential-computing/aligning-with-kata-confidential-containers-to-achieve-zero-trust/ba-p/3797876?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
-> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-kubernetes-126-support-in-aks?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5000119
As I attended KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in person one of my highlights in the context of Kubernetes in general was the keynote presentation by Microsoft about the KEDA sustainable autoscaler implementation. You can watch the recording here.