Efficient Configuration Management in AKS: Integrating Azure App Configuration for Seamless Loading of Key-Value Pairs into Config Maps

2023-06-13 8 min read Tutorial

Did you know that Azure App Configuration Service is a managed service that helps you centralize your application configuration? It provides a way to store all your app configs in one place and manage them centrally. It also provides a way to manage feature flags and control feature rollouts. I highlighted the feature management capabilities in a breakout session the Microsoft Build conference a few weeks ago. If you have not watched the session yet, you can find the recording here Continue reading

Effortlessly Deploy to Azure Kubernetes with Open Source Tools Draft and Acorn

2023-01-03 7 min read Tutorial

UPDATE On March 15, 2024 Acorn Labs announced that they will be shifting focus to developing an LLM app platform based on GPT-Script technology and has archived the Acorn Runtime project. In this post, I’ll walk you through deploying a web application to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) without having to write any Docker or Kubernetes manifest files. Using open-source command-line tools Draft and Acorn, we’ll containerize and deploy to AKS in just a few steps! Continue reading

Service Mesh Considerations

2022-12-14 9 min read Architecture

“Build microservices”, they said… “it’ll be fun”, they said… There are many reasons why you would want to deploy a solution based on the microservices architectural pattern, but it comes at a cost. More microservices means more deployments to manage, more microservices to connect, more microservices to secure… yeah, it gets complex real quick. If you’re just getting started with microservices or have a small number of microservices deployed, you may have heard of the term “service mesh”, but not needed one yet. Continue reading

Re-visiting Dev Container Features

2022-12-02 3 min read Tutorial

A few months ago I wrote a post that described how you can add custom features to your Dev Containers. That didn’t age very well 😅 But good news is that there is a better way to add or extend functionality for your Dev Containers. 🥳 Since my original post, @BrigitMurtaugh published a post on the VS Code blog announcing new repos, the open dev container specification and discussed a new way of adding features. Continue reading

Autoscaling Azure Container Apps

2022-09-11 6 min read Architecture

So, what makes Azure Container Apps “serverless”? Today we are going to focus on what makes Azure Container Apps (ACA) a “serverless” offering. But what does the term “serverless” really mean? As much as we’d like to think there aren’t any servers involved, that is certainly not the case. In general, “serverless” means that most (if not all) server maintenance has been abstracted away from you. With serverless, you don’t spend any time managing and patching servers. Continue reading

Microservices Communications with Azure Container Apps

2022-09-10 7 min read Architecture

Introduction In yesterday’s #ServerlessSeptember post, we learned what the Azure Container Apps (ACA) service is and the problems it aims to solve. It is considered to be a Container-as-a-Service platform since much of the complex implementation details of running a Kubernetes cluster is managed for you. Some of the use cases for ACA include event-driven processing jobs and background tasks, but this article will focus on hosting microservices, and how they can communicate with each other within the ACA service. Continue reading

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