Azure App Service vs Azure Kubernetes Service

Overview

Azure App Service

Stacks312

Followers380

Votes11

Azure Kubernetes Service

Stacks386

Followers351

Votes0

Azure App Service vs Azure Kubernetes Service: What are the differences?

Azure App Service and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) are two popular services offered by Microsoft Azure for deploying and managing applications. Let's discuss the key differences between them:

Scalability: Azure App Service allows easy horizontal scaling by adjusting the number of instances for a specific app, while AKS enables scaling by increasing or decreasing the number of worker nodes running the application. App Service makes it simple to scale vertically by provisioning higher tier plans to increase resources, whereas AKS scales resources automatically based on the defined cluster size and workload demands.
Platform Abstraction: App Service abstracts away the underlying infrastructure and provides a managed environment where developers can focus solely on the application code. AKS, on the other hand, is a Container Service that leverages Kubernetes orchestration framework, allowing developers more control over the infrastructure and customization options.
Deployment Model: App Service provides a seamless deployment experience using built-in deployment options like FTP, GitHub, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps. It supports deploying both code-based and containerized applications. In contrast, AKS is specifically designed for container-based deployments, leveraging Docker containers and Kubernetes to manage containerized workloads.
Networking: App Service has built-in integrations with Azure Networking features like Azure Virtual Network, Application Gateway, and Traffic Manager. It supports fully managed domain names, SSL certificates, and custom domains. AKS leverages Azure Virtual Network for networking isolation, but as a container orchestrator, it focuses more on service discovery and load balancing between containers.
Management and Monitoring: App Service provides a centralized management portal, streamlined deployment, and monitoring experience using Azure Monitor and Application Insights. AKS offers powerful management capabilities through the Kubernetes API, and it integrates well with various monitoring tools and frameworks such as Prometheus and Grafana.
Cost Model: App Service pricing is based on the App Service plan tier, providing options like Free, Shared, Standard, and Premium plans, allowing customers to choose the appropriate resources and features based on their needs. AKS pricing is based on the number and size of virtual machines (VMs) provisioned for the cluster, along with additional charges for managed Kubernetes components like Azure Container Registry, Load Balancer, and Azure Monitor.

In summary, Azure App Service provides a platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs, abstracting infrastructure details for simplicity. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers container orchestration for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes, providing more control over infrastructure configuration and scalability for containerized workloads.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Azure App Service	Azure Kubernetes Service
Quickly build, deploy, and scale web apps created with popular frameworks .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, or Python, in containers or running on any operating system. Meet rigorous, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements by using the fully managed platform for your operational and monitoring tasks.	Deploy and manage containerized applications more easily with a fully managed Kubernetes service. It offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. Unite your development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.
-	Deploy and manage Kubernetes with ease; Scale and run applications with confidence; Secure your Kubernetes environment; Accelerate containerized application development; Work how you want with open-source tools and APIs; Set up CI/CD in a few clicks
Statistics
Stacks 312	Stacks 386
Followers 380	Followers 351
Votes 11	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 6 .Net Framework 5 Visual studio	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Python .NET Ruby PHP Node.js .NET Core	Kubernetes Azure Container Registry

What are some alternatives to Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service?

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

Amazon EC2 Container Service

Amazon EC2 Container Service lets you launch and stop container-enabled applications with simple API calls, allows you to query the state of your cluster from a centralized service, and gives you access to many familiar Amazon EC2 features like security groups, EBS volumes and IAM roles.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Google Kubernetes Engine

Container Engine takes care of provisioning and maintaining the underlying virtual machine cluster, scaling your application, and operational logistics like logging, monitoring, and health management.

Related Comparisons

Azure App Service vs Azure Kubernetes Service: What are the differences?

Azure App Service and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) are two popular services offered by Microsoft Azure for deploying and managing applications. Let's discuss the key differences between them:

Scalability: Azure App Service allows easy horizontal scaling by adjusting the number of instances for a specific app, while AKS enables scaling by increasing or decreasing the number of worker nodes running the application. App Service makes it simple to scale vertically by provisioning higher tier plans to increase resources, whereas AKS scales resources automatically based on the defined cluster size and workload demands.
Platform Abstraction: App Service abstracts away the underlying infrastructure and provides a managed environment where developers can focus solely on the application code. AKS, on the other hand, is a Container Service that leverages Kubernetes orchestration framework, allowing developers more control over the infrastructure and customization options.
Deployment Model: App Service provides a seamless deployment experience using built-in deployment options like FTP, GitHub, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps. It supports deploying both code-based and containerized applications. In contrast, AKS is specifically designed for container-based deployments, leveraging Docker containers and Kubernetes to manage containerized workloads.
Networking: App Service has built-in integrations with Azure Networking features like Azure Virtual Network, Application Gateway, and Traffic Manager. It supports fully managed domain names, SSL certificates, and custom domains. AKS leverages Azure Virtual Network for networking isolation, but as a container orchestrator, it focuses more on service discovery and load balancing between containers.
Management and Monitoring: App Service provides a centralized management portal, streamlined deployment, and monitoring experience using Azure Monitor and Application Insights. AKS offers powerful management capabilities through the Kubernetes API, and it integrates well with various monitoring tools and frameworks such as Prometheus and Grafana.
Cost Model: App Service pricing is based on the App Service plan tier, providing options like Free, Shared, Standard, and Premium plans, allowing customers to choose the appropriate resources and features based on their needs. AKS pricing is based on the number and size of virtual machines (VMs) provisioned for the cluster, along with additional charges for managed Kubernetes components like Azure Container Registry, Load Balancer, and Azure Monitor.

Azure App Service vs Azure Kubernetes Service

Overview