Azure Kubernetes Service Case Study !!
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is a rapidly evolving platform that manages container-based applications and their associated networking and storage components. The focus is on the application workloads, not the underlying infrastructure components. Kubernetes provides a declarative approach to deployments, backed by a robust set of APIs for management operations.
You can build and run modern, portable, microservices-based applications that benefit from Kubernetes orchestrating and managing the availability of those application components. Kubernetes supports both stateless and stateful applications as teams progress through the adoption of microservices-based applications.
As an open platform, Kubernetes allows you to build your applications with your preferred programming language, OS, libraries, or messaging bus. Existing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools can integrate with Kubernetes to schedule and deploy releases.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides a managed Kubernetes service that reduces the complexity for deployment and core management tasks, including coordinating upgrades. The AKS control plane is managed by the Azure platform, and you only pay for the AKS nodes that run your applications. AKS is built on top of the open-source Azure Kubernetes Service Engine
How Kubernetes works :
As applications grow to span multiple containers deployed across multiple servers, operating them becomes more complex. To manage this complexity, Kubernetes provides an open-source API that controls how and where those containers will run.
Kubernetes orchestrates clusters of virtual machines and schedules containers to run on those virtual machines based on their available compute resources and the resource requirements of each container. Containers are grouped into pods, the basic operational unit for Kubernetes, and those pods scale to your desired state.
Kubernetes also automatically manages service discovery, incorporates load balancing, tracks resource allocation, and scales based on computing utilization. And, it checks the health of individual resources and enables apps to self-heal by automatically restarting or replicating containers.
Common uses of Kubernetes Service :
What Is Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform created by Microsoft which developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy and manage applications through their global network of datacentres.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) :
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies deploying a managed Kubernetes cluster in Azure by offloading much of the complexity and operational overhead to Azure. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks for you, like health monitoring and maintenance.
Since the Kubernetes masters are managed by Azure, you only manage and maintain the agent nodes. Thus, as a managed Kubernetes service, AKS is free; you only pay for the agent nodes within your clusters, not for the masters.
You can create an AKS cluster using the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, or using template-driven deployment options, such as Resource Manager templates and Terraform. When you deploy an AKS cluster, the Kubernetes master and all nodes are deployed and configured for you. Additional features such as advanced networking, Azure Active Directory integration, and monitoring can also be configured during the deployment process. Windows Server containers are supported in AKS.
Features Of Azure Kubernetes Sevice :
- Migration of existing applications: You can easily migrate existing apps to containers and run them with Azure Kubernetes Service. You can also control access via Azure AD integration and SLA-based Azure Services like Azure Database using Open Service Broker for Azure (OSBA).
- Simplifying the configuration and management of microservices-based Apps: You can also simplify the development and management of microservices-based apps as well as streamline load balancing, horizontal scaling, self-healing, and secret management with AKS.
- Bringing DevOps and Kubernetes together: AKS is also a reliable resource to bring Kubernetes and DevOps together for securing DevOps implementation with Kubernetes. Bringing both together, it improves the security and speed of the development process with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) with dynamic policy controls.
- Ease of scaling: AKS can also be applied in many other use cases such as ease of scaling by using Azure Container Instances (ACI) and AKS. By doing this, you can use AKS virtual node to provision pods inside Azure Container Instance (ACI) that start within a few seconds and enables AKS to run with required resources. If your AKS cluster is run out of resources, if will scale-out additional pods automatically without any additional servers to manage in the Kubernetes environment.
- Data streaming: AKS can also be used to ingest and process real-time data streams with data points via sensors and perform quick analysis.
- Easily rollout your service with a new or older version.
Use Case Study of AKS With Bosch:
About Bosch in India :
In India, Bosch is a leading supplier of technology and services in the areas of Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. Additionally, Bosch has, in India, the largest development center outside Germany, for end to end engineering and technology solutions.
The Bosch Group operates in India through thirteen companies, viz, Bosch Limited, Bosch Chassis Systems India Private Limited, Bosch Rexroth (India) Private Limited, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited, Bosch Automotive Electronics India Private Limited, Bosch Electrical Drives India Private Limited, BSH Home Appliances Private Limited, ETAS Automotive India Private Limited, Robert Bosch Automotive Steering Private Limited, Automobility Services and Solutions Private Limited, Newtech Filter India Private Limited and Mivin Engg .Technologies Private Limited and Precision Seals Manufacturing Limited. In India, Bosch set-up its manufacturing operation in 1951, which has grown over the years to include 18 manufacturing sites, and seven development and application centers.
Challenge:
When Robert Bosch GmbH set out to solve the problem of drivers going the wrong way on highways, the goal was to save lives. Other services like this existed in Germany, but precision and speed cannot be compromised. Could Bosch get precise enough location data — in real time — to do this? The company knew it had to try.
To solve this challenge Bosch team had to solve two major issues: first, to get the last piece of information out of the noisy sensor data; and second, to develop a highly scalable and ultra-flexible service to process the data in near real time. The question was how to build a real-time data ingestion and processing pipeline capable of returning notifications to drivers within seconds. Bosch Technical Lead Hai Dang Le developed a proof of concept using only a small technology stack, adding, “We really went for it!”
The problem was speed. Now they needed lightning fast compute capable of filtering events and pushing a notification back to an end device within 10 seconds — the time estimated to make the solution viable.’
Solution:
The team decided to offload the work of scaling and cluster maintenance to a managed service in a public cloud with a global reach.
“We were looking for a cloud option where we could run our core business logic with zero changes on top of a new infrastructure,” explains Le.
Azure Kubernetes Service was the obvious choice. A team of Microsoft cloud solution architects worked closely with Bosch engineers, who provided valuable feedback to Azure product teams. Microsoft continues to work with Bosch teams around the world. Working together, they devised a solution that produced the speed Bosch needed.
Azure Services Workflow by Bosch :
AKS also offered the simplicity of a managed Kubernetes service in the cloud. It provided the elastic provisioning that Bosch wanted, without the need to manage its own infrastructure. In addition, the developers did not have to rethink all their design decisions. Instead, they could take the core business logic developed on-premises using the open-source tools they knew and run the solution virtually as is, within a faster infrastructure with a worldwide reach. The developers can deploy self-managed AKS clusters as needed, and they get the benefit of running their services within a secured network environment.
Result :
In addition, by running their solution on Azure and AKS, the average time to calculate whether a driver is going the wrong way could be improved to approximately 60 milliseconds.
“Using AKS was a strategic decision. We looked for a managed orchestrator so we could offload the work of patching, upgrading, and production-level services. That’s why we chose AKS — and it’s a very open, flexible platform.” says- Hai Dang Le(technical lead)