Microsoft has announced to retire its Azure Container Service (ACS) and block all ACS APIs in 2020.
Azure Container Service helps enterprises and developers to deploy a production-ready Kubernetes, DC/OS, and Docker Swarm clusters.
However, Microsoft had introduced Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in 2017 to simplify Kubernetes management, deployment, and operations. AKS also enables users to dynamically scale their application infrastructure with confidence and agility.
Why is Microsoft retiring Azure Container Service? Well, all the capabilities of ACS for Kubernetes are available with AKS. Hence, the tech giant decided to retire ACS as a standalone service.
Users wouldn’t be able to create new clusters, update, or scale existing clusters using the portal, CLI, or Resource Manager templates.
However, Microsoft will allow listing and deletion of existing clusters using client tools. The existing clusters and applications will continue to work but Microsoft wouldn’t support ongoing operation of these clusters.
“Please note that ongoing operation of these clusters is your responsibility and is not within Azure’s support scope,” wrote Microsoft in a blog post.
Further, Microsoft will also stop development of acs-engine project which is used to create unmanaged container orchestrator cluster. The tech giant is migrating the Kubernetes part of acs-engine project to aks-engine repo.
Before the Azure Container Service retires on January 31, 2020, the users of Kubernetes orchestrator will need to migrate to AKS before ACS retires. The migration will prove to be beneficial for users as it will come with feature enhancements.
These enhancements include simplified deployment of managed Kubernetes clusters in Azure, reduced complexity and operational overhead of managing Kubernetes, as well as handling of critical tasks like health monitoring and maintenance.
Also read: Microsoft enables replication of Azure VMs to other regions with new disaster recovery feature
Whereas, the users of ACS with Docker will need to switch to the Basic or Standard Docker Enterprise Edition for Azure solution template. For users of ACS with DC/OS, Microsoft recommends migration to Mesosphere DC/OS Enterprise or Mesosphere DC/OS Open Source solution template.
