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Microsoft's managed Kubernetes service with a free control-plane tier
Updated
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is Microsoft Azure's managed Kubernetes container orchestration service, which runs the Kubernetes control plane for you while you pay for the underlying virtual machines.
You create a cluster and node pools, AKS manages the control plane, and you pay for the VMs that run workloads. The control-plane charge depends on the tier.
AKS is used by teams running containerized workloads on Azure who want Kubernetes without operating the control plane.
AKS has Free, Standard and Premium tiers. The Free tier has no control-plane charge; Standard and Premium charge per cluster, with rates shown in Azure's pricing calculator. Compute is billed separately for the VMs.
AKS runs within Azure and uses Azure compute, networking and storage; specific integrations are listed in Azure documentation.
Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise Kubernetes platform with added developer tooling and support, often run across clouds. Rancher is a multi-cluster management tool that can manage AKS. Docker is a container runtime and tooling, not a managed cluster service.
Pricing Model
USAGE BASED
Starting Price
Contact vendor
Free Options
Free version
| Feature | Free | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| No control-plane charge | , | , | |
| No SLA | , | , | |
| Pay for node VMs | , | , | |
| Financially backed SLA | , | , | |
| Up to 5,000 nodes | , | , | |
| Long Term Support | , | , | |
| Standard SLA | , | , |
API Types
SDK Availability
Verify SDK availability in vendor's documentation.
Developer Features
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Compliance Standards
SOC 2 Type II
EnterpriseISO 27001
EnterpriseGDPR Compliant
GlobalHIPAA
HealthcarePCI DSS
FinanceCCPA
PrivacyFedRAMP
GovernmentCSA STAR
CloudDeployment & Data
Data Residency Options
Verify with vendor for your specific region requirements.
Open source multi-cluster Kubernetes management platform
Container platform for building, sharing and running applications
Enterprise Kubernetes application platform
Container management GUI for Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes
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