Highlights –

  • AKS light, Microsoft’s own Kubernetes distribution, was introduced to run both Windows and Linux workloads, which was originally uncovered at Build earlier this year as Project Haven.
  • Microsoft also disclosed this week that it is extending the Azure Hybrid Benefit to AKS and Azure Stack HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure) for users interested in combining AKS plus Azure Arc to manage their apps from cloud to edge.

Microsoft’s ‘Project Haven’ work is seeing progress, making container-based app development and management an essential piece of Microsoft’s evolving Azure cloud picture.

This week, several new product announcements were made at the Ignite 2022 conference, highlighting how Microsoft’s Azure and Azure Arc cloud management platform continues to evolve. And a crucial component of its distributed cloud-to-edge strategy is expanding Kubernetes container support to more endpoints.

At the event, the tech giant announced the general availability of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for Windows IoT and Windows-based devices, which will be available in November. This lightweight version of AKS, dubbed by authorities as AKS lite in a blog post on October 12, will work on microprocessors and PC-like architectures running with these operating systems: Windows 10 or 11 IoT Enterprise, Windows 10 or 11 Pro, or Windows Server.

AKS light, Microsoft’s own Kubernetes distribution, was introduced to run both Windows and Linux workloads, which was originally uncovered at Build earlier this year as Project Haven. Haven utilizes Microsoft’s own CBL-Mariner Linux distribution for Linux containers. Azure Arc can be used to manage these containers.

According to Erin Chapple, corporate vice president of Azure Core at Microsoft, container deployment and management are increasingly becoming important to many of Microsoft’s clients’ IT strategies. By building apps to run in containers, Microsoft enables customers to take parts of that app and deploy and manage them anywhere a container platform operates, be it in the public cloud on Azure, Windows/Windows Server, or IoT devices.

Chapple noted, “In its early days, (Azure) Arc was more of an on-premises mindset. It lets you manage [on-premises assets] from the cloud and connect to the cloud.” But now, for several customers, “the application is now the center of gravity,” she said. And while some components of a program may run in the cloud, others may require on-premises hosting for a variety of reasons.

She said that the components of any particular workload most suited to run are frequently linked back to data. “For example, sometimes it may make more sense to train an AI model at the edge because users may not want or need to pump all their data into a datalake. But in other cases, they may want to train it in the cloud, especially if they need the most up-to-date infrastructure.”

For users interested in using AKS plus Azure Arc to manage their apps from cloud to edge, Microsoft also disclosed this week that it is extending the Azure Hybrid Benefit to AKS and Azure Stack HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure). Customers can use AKS on Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI at no extra cost if they have Windows Software Assurance and Cloud Solution Provider Subscriptions.