Ben Armstrong; bringing AKS on-prem | The SysAdmin DOJO Podcast

We sit down with Ben Armstrong from Microsoft to talk about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI! Being a Group Program Manager for AKS on premises, Ben spends his time making life easier for infrastructure administrators running compute workloads on premises. In previous roles for Ben, this meant VMs, but now his focus is on Containers and Kubernetes! In this episode we cover what AKS is, why it’s important for IT Pros, adoption outlook and more!

Also worth mentioning is that we changed things up with this episode. The conversation with Ben was so engaging that we’ve split this episode into a two-part episode, with this one focusing on the AKS discussion. Part two will focus on Hyper-V, including some behind the scenes information on Microsoft’s decision to stop development of the free Hyper-V Server SKU. So, keep a look out for part two next week! Enjoy!

In this episode

• What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) – 4:30
• Where does AKS run on premises? – 12:20
• What is the value-add for Kubernetes and Containers for the sysadmin? – 13:17
• Are there any concerns with Serverless computer (like Azure Functions) eventually overtaking containers? – 28:33
• What does the adoption of containers look like today? – 39:40

Episode quotes

• A while ago, 6 or 7 years ago, the industry started thinking about containers
• The problem with Kubernetes is that it’s mind-blowingly complicated
• And the punchline they always get to is, with all of this, our company can run 10000 VMs…. Crowd Cheers
• Oh my god…. so many file servers…
• We’re the infrastructure team, but we have this other team of smelly developers and I give them Linux VMs and they go away
• To which the infrastructure people are like, Kuber-what?
• Everyone has an annoying person in their company that wants to do something with the SQL database that they shouldn’t
• AKS is the fastest growing service in Azure
• Where the developers are today is where the infrastructure will be in a couple of years time

Resources for Azure Kubernetes Service

• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Kubernetes Server on Azure Stack HCI
• Azure Stack HCI Resources
• Jeff Woolsey – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft
• Taylor Brown – Group Program Manager at Microsoft

Watch webinar (on-demand)

• How Azure Stack HCI is forcing changes in your datacenter

Have a question? Want to feedback? Send us a Tweet!

• Andy Syrewicze
• Ben Armstrong
• Altaro Software