Azure Kubernetes Service - Rationale for Using AKS for .NET Applications

Why use the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for your .NET applications (rather than just deploy them to virtual machines)?

First, there are scalability benefits - these are ideal for microservices.

Kubernetes has "canned processes" for scaling.

Kubernetes has what's called Horizontal Pod autoscaling - which means when load increases, the system deploys more pods.  It doesn't change the dynamics of the pods themselves i.e. doesn't allocate more memory or CPU to them, it just makes more pods.

AutoScaling in the Cloud - Like Load Balancing, But Different

Autoscaling allows scalability in the cloud by allocating the "right" number of active servers for a given "load". There is also a resiliency element as loss of capacity due to application or hardware failure can be compensated by autoscaling.

Companies like Netflix use autoscaling features in AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) - note: autoscaling was officially added to EC2 in May 2009. Netflix declared a policy of aggressive scale-up and cautious scale-down had the optimal effect. In 2013, Microsoft announced addition of autoscaling to Azure.