Azure Container Instances

Today's article will explain what is Azure Container Instances Service (aka ACI). We would explore how it eases container executions on the cloud and when is it a better option in contrast to Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Service Fabric.

Goals

By the end of this article, you should know:

  • When should you pick containers over Virtual Machines.
  • What is Azure Container Instances (ACI).
  • When should you pick ACI over Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Service Fabric.

Why pick containers over virtual machines.

  • Speed - Containers run on top of a host OS sharing its kernel, this results to faster boot up times. ACI can start containers in Azure in seconds, without the need to provision and manage virtual machines yourself.
  • Incorruptibles - Unlike virtual machines, containers can quickly recover from OS or Hardware based corruptions especially in cloud provider environments. Your application can get back up quickly thanks to instantiations of containers out of immutable images.
  • Modularity - Containers enables you to modularize your application by splitting independent work flow steps on their own tiny sandboxes. An example use case where containers shine is a video processing pipeline that requires video compression, thumbnail extraction, watermarking and meta data extraction that experiences a performance bottleneck on one of those steps. Containers can help you scale specific steps that needs more processing power to make your processing pipeline work efficiently.
  • Packaging - Containers ease software packaging as it lets you ship your application to production environment quickly. Dockerfile allows you to specify all the binaries, dependencies, configuration and build time processes your application needs. Docker makes your application immutable and lets you spin up and tear down containers any time you wanted to.

What is Azure Container Instances (ACI)?

Azure Container Instances aka ACI is a Windows Azure Service that offers that fastest and simplest way to run a container in the cloud. It abstracts away the pain and skill set required to manage virtual machines without having to adopt a higher-level service.

Azure Container Instances is a great solution for any scenario that can operate in isolated containers, including simple applications, task automation and build jobs.

Azure Container Instances (ACI) is a more optimal option as it allows you to specify custom memory and cpu that your application needs. This makes ACI a more cost-efficient option for running rarely used jobs (once a month, once a week, once a year or once every time a new kid of yours is born).

Finally, containers were historically built for application dependency isolation and resource governance but not have been considered sufficiently to be hardened for hostile multi-tenant usage. Azure container instances solves this by guaranteeing that your application will be isolated on your container from the rest of the containers living on the same host through the use of pre-configured permission sets.

When to pick ACI over Azure Kubernetes and Service Fabric?

Azure Container Instances (ACI) is a better option compared to Azure Kubernetes Service and Service Fabric if:

  • Your workload don't need complex container orchestration like self healing, complex service discovery and mesh features.
  • Your application is a job that can run standalone and don't need or depend on some other container-based action.
  • Your application is a job that rarely runs (Control-M or Scheduled Jobs).
  • You want to have fine grain and very small execution workload.

Conclusion

Azure Container Instances (ACI) opens a lot of new use-cases of running containers on the cloud. It also optimizes the cost of running older use cases through the micro-billing scheme. We also learned that ACI can be a more viable option compared to Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Service Fabric.

Related Articles

Get some cool stuff from Amazon to help me fund my articles.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building Simple API Gateways with Ocelot and ASP.net Core

Image
In the previous article , we've discovered what is an API gateway and the cool things that it brings. This article will demonstrate how to build a simple API gateway that routes incoming HTTP requests to the appropriate downstream services. Articles in the Series This article belongs to a series of articles that explains the importance of API gateways and how to build them using ASP.net Core. If you're interested to learn more about API gateways, it might be a good idea to spend some time reading the articles listed below. Part 1: API Gateway in a Nutshell. Part 2: Building Simple API Gateways with Ocelot. Part 3: API Response Aggregation using Ocelot Part 4: API Defense using Rate Limiting a...
Read more

API Gateway: Response Aggregation with Ocelot and ASP.net Core

Image
In the previous article , we've learned how to setup an API gateway using ASP.net Core and Ocelot. This article supplements the previous article by introducing downstream response aggregation through the use of API gateways. You can download the application used in this article by cloning it from GITHUB . Articles in the Series This article belongs to a series of articles that explains the importance of API gateways and how to build them using ASP.net Core. If you're interested to learn more about API gateways, it might be a good idea to spend some time reading the articles listed below. Part 1: API Gateway in a Nutshell. Part 2: Building Simple API Gateways with Ocelot. Part 3: API Response Aggregation using Ocelot P...
Read more

Replicating Netflix Part 1: Installing Raspbian Lite using Etcher

Image
This is the pilot post for building a Raspberry Pi cluster that I intend to use for building a Nextflix replica at home for research purposes, the goal of the post is to install a Raspbian Jessie Lite on a Micro SD card that I plan to install on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Motherboard s. Most stores nowadays would sell Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Motherboard s that have pre-installed SD Cards and OS (Most of the time outdated). This is definitely OK and convenient but it is prone to two major problems: Guys who buy Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Motherboard s with pre-installed SD cards and OS don't understand how to install things on their own. The pre-installed OS is often outdated from what is available from the internet. Stuff you need An SD card with at least 48 MB/s transfer speed. For me I've used a Samsung 32GB 80MB/s EVO Select Micro SDHC Memory Card (MB-ME32DA/AM) because faster cards are better! ...
Read more

API Gateway in a Nutshell

Image
In this article, we will explore what are API gateways, the use-cases that you wanna solve with it and the benefits that you rip out of using them. This will be an introductory post to a series of articles that will showcase API gateway development using ASP.net Core, NodeJS and Docker. Articles in the Series This article belongs to a series of articles that explains the importance of API gateways and how to build them using ASP.net Core. If you're interested to learn more about API gateways, it might be a good idea to spend some time reading the articles listed below. Part 1: API Gateway in a Nutshell. Part 2: Building Simple API Gateways with Ocelot. Part 3: API Response Aggregation using Ocelot Part 4: API Def...
Read more