Azure AppService vs Azure Kubernetes Service
If you are using Azure and about to select an orchestration service in which to host your application, you are probably confused with the following decision:
Should I deploy my application in Azure Kubernetes Service or in Azure AppService?
While this decision ultimately depends on the requirements at hand, there are long-term implications for your choice.Let’s discuss the things in little detail:
Azure App Service is a fully managed HTTP-based service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. If you are looking for a quick hosting solution for your application in Azure, Azure AppService is definitely the easiest & quickest way to be up and running. It supports deployment from source code or docker image.
When your application development moves towards a container based approach, the need to orchestrate and manage resource is important. Kubernetes is a container orchestration technology. Kubernetes groups the containers that support a single application or microservice into a pod. AKS manages your hosted Kubernetes environment, making it quick and easy to deploy and manage containerized applications without container orchestration expertise. It also eliminates the burden of ongoing operations and maintenance by provisioning, upgrading, and scaling resources on demand, without taking your applications offline.
Below are the advantages of AKS over Azure App service
Resource Control
In AKS, you can control CPU, memory for each container inside a pod. But in Azure App service, there is no way to limit the consumption of memory and CPU services in AppService.
Environments
The only way to create more than one environment in AppService is by having multiple AppServicePlan. Each AppServicePlan runs in separate hardware, so it is not possible to share computing resources across the environments.
In AKS, We can have separate environments by having separate clusters or by creating separate namespaces inside the same Kubernetes cluster. It is also easy to create new environments as a namespace can be created very easily in Kubernetes. Furthermore, it is possible to isolate workloads by using separate node pools.
Pricing
Running applications in App Service Plan is much more expensive than running them in AKS. E.g. running AKS cluster is entirely free. You pay only for the underlying VM infrastructure. With App Service Plan, you also pay for managed service that makes sure your containers are always working. Visit for AKS Pricing details
Below are the advantages of Azure App service over Azure Kubernetes Service
Fast Setup
Setting up an App Service is also very straightforward. It takes maximum of few hours to deploy your first container, even without prior experience with it.
Much Easier to Manage
Azure App Service for Linux is much easier to manage than Kubernetes. It is a fully managed service, which means that there is an SLA guarantee on your application working in the environment.
Auto Scalling
Azure App Service is easy to scale. You get automatic scaling, such as by CPU usage, out-of-the-box. App Services also provide you with free SSL certificate for one of the Azure domains that you get along with the service. But Auto scalling in App service comes with extra cost.
Conclusion
Azure App Service is NOT a container orchestrator. This means that you will not get all the flexibility of a container orchestrator. It is a much simpler service, though. It does not require a lot of knowledge or experience with running containers and is definitely recommended for people that don’t know where to start with Docker.
On the other hand, if you need a microservice platform and you already possess significant experience with containers, you probably are better off with AKS. Remember that the price you pay is the knowledge and time effort to setup those solutions.
Leave a Reply