How to Migrate Applications from On-Prem to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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As businesses continue to embrace the cloud, migrating applications from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments is becoming increasingly common. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is one of the most popular solutions for containerized application management in the cloud. It offers scalability, resilience, and cost-efficiency. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to successfully migrate your applications from on-premises infrastructure to AKS.

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1. Why Migrate to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Migrating to Azure Kubernetes Service offers several benefits:

Scalability: AKS allows you to scale your applications with ease, either manually or automatically, depending on traffic patterns.
Managed Service: With AKS, Microsoft handles the underlying infrastructure, making it easier to focus on developing and running your applications.
Cost Efficiency: You only pay for the resources you use, reducing operational overhead.
Reliability and Resilience: Kubernetes provides built-in features like self-healing, auto-scaling, and high availability, ensuring that your applications run smoothly.

But before diving into migration, it’s essential to plan the process carefully.

2. Prepare for the Migration

Assess the Current Environment

Before moving any workloads to AKS, assess your on-premises environment:

Infrastructure Inventory: Identify which applications are running on your on-premises servers, and evaluate their complexity, dependencies, and resource consumption.
Performance Requirements: Understand the performance metrics of your applications, including CPU, memory, storage, and network usage.
Security Considerations: Review your security policies and ensure they can be applied in the cloud environment.

Define the Migration Strategy

Decide on a migration strategy that suits your business needs. There are generally three approaches:

Lift-and-Shift (Rehost): Move the application as-is from your on-premises environment to AKS.
Refactor: Modify the application to fully utilize cloud-native services and containers.
Rearchitect: Redesign the application to be fully cloud-native, utilizing microservices and Kubernetes.

3. Prepare Your Applications for Kubernetes

Containerize Applications

The first step in migrating your application to AKS is to containerize it. Docker is the most widely used platform for creating containers.

Dockerize your apps: If you have traditional monolithic applications, break them down into manageable components (services) that can be independently containerized.
Dockerfiles: Create Dockerfiles to define the instructions for building your container image.
Dependencies: Ensure that all the dependencies required by your application are included in the container image.

Example Dockerfile for a Node.js application:

FROM node:14
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["node", "app.js"]

FROM node:14

WORKDIR /app

COPY package*.json ./

RUN npm install

COPY . .

EXPOSE 8080

CMD ["node", "app.js"]

Set Up Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Implementing CI/CD pipelines is essential for automating the testing and deployment of applications to AKS.

CI/CD tools: You can use Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions to automate the build and deployment process.
Helm Charts: Use Helm, a Kubernetes package manager, to define Kubernetes resources for your applications.

4. Set Up Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Now that your application is containerized, it’s time to set up AKS.

Create an AKS Cluster

Create a Resource Group: A resource group in Azure will contain all the resources you will use, such as AKS, storage, and networking.
az group create –name myResourceGroup –location eastus
Create the AKS Cluster: Use the Azure CLI to create an AKS cluster.
az aks create –resource-group myResourceGroup –name myAKSCluster –node-count 3 –enable-addons monitoring –generate-ssh-keys
Configure kubectl: To interact with your AKS cluster, configure the kubectl CLI tool:
az aks get-credentials –resource-group myResourceGroup –name myAKSCluster

Configure Networking and Storage

Networking: Set up network policies, virtual networks, and subnets. Ensure your on-premise network can securely communicate with your Azure network.
Storage: Use Azure Disk Storage or Azure Blob Storage to store persistent data for your applications.

5. Migrate the Applications

Deploy Applications to AKS

Create Kubernetes Manifests: Write Kubernetes YAML files that define the deployment configurations (e.g., deployments, services, ingress).

Example of a Kubernetes deployment file:

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

metadata:

  name: my-app

spec:

  replicas: 3

  selector:

    matchLabels:

      app: my-app

  template:

    metadata:

      labels:

        app: my-app

    spec:

      containers:

        - name: my-app

          image: myapp:v1

          ports:

            - containerPort: 8080

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

metadata:

name: my-app

spec:

replicas: 3

selector:

matchLabels:

app: my-app

template:

metadata:

labels:

app: my-app

spec:

containers:

- name: my-app

image: myapp:v1

ports:

- containerPort: 8080

Deploy to AKS: Use kubectl apply to deploy your application to AKS.
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
Expose Your Application: Expose your application to the internet by creating a Kubernetes service or ingress resource.

apiVersion: v1

kind: Service

metadata:

  name: my-app-service

spec:

  selector:

    app: my-app

  ports:

    - protocol: TCP

      port: 80

      targetPort: 8080

  type: LoadBalancer

apiVersion: v1

kind: Service

metadata:

name: my-app-service

spec:

selector:

app: my-app

ports:

- protocol: TCP

port: 80

targetPort: 8080

type: LoadBalancer

Monitor and Troubleshoot

Azure Monitor: Use Azure Monitor to track your cluster and application metrics, ensuring that everything is running smoothly.
Logs: Use kubectl logs to view logs and diagnose issues with your deployments.

6. Post-Migration Considerations

Ongoing Monitoring and Scaling

Auto-scaling: Configure the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) to automatically scale your application based on resource usage.
Health Checks: Set up liveness and readiness probes to ensure your application is healthy and can be restarted when necessary.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Once your applications are running in AKS, streamline your development process by implementing continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This allows you to automatically deploy updates to your applications in a controlled and efficient manner.

Conclusion

Migrating applications from on-prem to Azure Kubernetes Service offers significant advantages in scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can ensure a smooth transition to the cloud, improve your development processes, and fully leverage the power of Kubernetes. Whether you’re lifting and shifting applications or refactoring them for the cloud, AKS provides the tools and infrastructure to succeed in your cloud journey.

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About CloudThat

CloudThat is a leading provider of Cloud Training and Consulting services with a global presence in India, the USA, Asia, Europe, and Africa. Specializing in AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, VMware, Databricks, and more, the company serves mid-market and enterprise clients, offering comprehensive expertise in Cloud Migration, Data Platforms, DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and more.

CloudThat is the first Indian Company to win the prestigious Microsoft Partner 2024 Award and is recognized as a top-tier partner with AWS and Microsoft, including the prestigious ‘Think Big’ partner award from AWS and the Microsoft Superstars FY 2023 award in Asia & India. Having trained 650k+ professionals in 500+ cloud certifications and completed 300+ consulting projects globally, CloudThat is an official AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Microsoft Gold Partner, AWS Training Partner, AWS Migration Partner, AWS Data and Analytics Partner, AWS DevOps Competency Partner, AWS GenAI Competency Partner, Amazon QuickSight Service Delivery Partner, Amazon EKS Service Delivery Partner, AWS Microsoft Workload Partners, Amazon EC2 Service Delivery Partner, Amazon ECS Service Delivery Partner, AWS Glue Service Delivery Partner, Amazon Redshift Service Delivery Partner, AWS Control Tower Service Delivery Partner, AWS WAF Service Delivery Partner, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon OpenSearch, AWS DMS and many more.