What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes on Azure. AKS manages the Kubernetes control plane (master nodes) for free — you only pay for the worker nodes (VMs running your containers). It integrates with Azure services: Azure Container Registry (private image storage), Azure Active Directory (RBAC), Azure Monitor (logging and metrics), Azure CNI networking, and Azure Load Balancer. AKS supports auto-scaling (Cluster Autoscaler for nodes, Horizontal Pod Autoscaler for pods), rolling deployments, and multiple node pools with different VM sizes for specialized workloads.