Designing Flexible Architectures with Kubernetes and Cloud

The design diagram for Kubernetes on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) involves several components. Here's a breakdown of the key elements you'd typically include, along with a visual representation: Core AKS Architecture Components: Azure Region: The geographical location where your AKS cluster is deployed. Azure Virtual Network (VNet): The private network space for your cluster, often segmented into subnets. Subnets: AKS Subnet: For the AKS nodes. Application Gateway Subnet (if used): For the ingress controller. Azure Firewall Subnet (if used): For centralized egress filtering. AKS Control Plane: (Managed by Azure) API Server Scheduler Controller Manager etcd (key-value store) Node Pools: System Node Pool: Runs critical system pods (CoreDNS, Kube-proxy, etc.). Often uses Linux VMs. User Node Pool(s): Runs your application workloads. Can be Linux or Windows. Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS): Underpin the node pools, providing auto-scaling capabilities. Container Registry: Azure Container Registry (ACR): A private registry to store your Docker images and Helm charts. Ingress Controller: Azure Application Gateway Ingress Controller (AGIC): Integrates AKS with Azure Application Gateway for advanced routing, WAF, and SSL offloading. NGINX Ingress Controller: A popular open-source option. Load Balancers: Azure Load Balancer (Standard): Used by Kubernetes Services of type LoadBalancer to expose applications externally. Storage: Azure Disks: For ReadWriteOnce (RWO) persistent volumes. Azure Files: For ReadWriteMany (RWX) persistent volumes, often used with SMB. Azure NetApp Files: High-performance shared storage. Monitoring & Logging: Azure Monitor for Containers: Collects metrics and logs from AKS and sends them to Log Analytics Workspace. Log Analytics Workspace: Centralized log storage and querying. Azure Dashboards/Workbooks: For visualization. Security & Identity: Azure Active Directory (AAD) Integration: For authenticating to the cluster and controlling access. Azure RBAC for Kubernetes Authorization: Granular access control within the cluster. Azure Policy for AKS: Enforce policies on your cluster (e.g., allowed image registries, resource limits). Azure Key Vault: Securely store secrets (database connection strings, API keys) and integrate with CSI Driver. Networking Add-ons: Azure CNI (Advanced Networking): Provides each pod with its own private IP from the VNet subnet. Kube-net (Basic Networking): Pods get IPs from a private CIDR block not part of the VNet. DevOps Components: Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions: For CI/CD pipelines to build images and deploy to AKS. Helm: Package manager for Kubernetes. Here's a simplified design diagram illustrating these concepts:

🚀 Running Kubernetes in one cloud is powerful. Running it in multiple clouds? That’s strategy. This is the architecture I rely on to manage production-grade Kubernetes clusters across AWS (EKS) and Azure (AKS) — all with security, automation, and observability baked in. Here’s how we do it: 🔧 IaC with Terraform — ensures consistent provisioning across cloud boundaries 🚀 GitOps with FluxCD and ArgoCD — automates deployments in both environments 🔍 Prometheus + Grafana — unified observability stack for metrics, alerts, and dashboards 🔐 OPA Gatekeeper + Azure AD/IRSA — policy enforcement and fine-grained access control 📦 Managed Node Groups & Node Pools — for scaling and workload isolation 💡 This setup lets us: Standardize CI/CD workflows Scale applications predictably Enforce compliance without slowing down delivery Gain full visibility into cluster health and performance 🧠 Multi-cloud Kubernetes isn't about redundancy for its own sake — it’s about resilience, vendor flexibility, and team empowerment. ❇️ Follow me for more 🙌 I post contents on: #Kubernetes #AWS #Azure #EKS #AKS #GitOps #ArgoCD #FluxCD #Terraform #Bicep #DevOps #CloudNative #CloudComputing #MultiCloud #CloudArchitecture #PlatformEngineering #IaC #Observability #Prometheus #Grafana #OpenPolicyAgent #CloudSecurity #DevSecOps #InfrastructureAsCode #CICD #SRE #K8s #Helm #TechLeadership #ContainerOrchestration #EngineeringExcellence

💡 Why Invest in Cloud-Agnostic Infrastructure? Over the past 17 years, I’ve been deeply involved in designing, transforming, deploying, and migrating cloud infrastructures for various Fortune 500 organizations. With Kubernetes as the industry standard, I’ve noticed a growing trend: companies increasingly adopt cloud-agnostic infrastructure. At Cloudchipr, besides offering the best DevOps and FinOps SaaS platform, our DevOps team helps organizations build multi-cloud infrastructures. Let’s explore the Why, What, and How behind cloud-agnostic infrastructure. The Why No one wants to be vendor-locked, right? Beyond cost, it’s also about scalability and reliability. It's unfortunate when you need to scale rapidly, but your cloud provider has capacity limits. Many customers face these challenges, leading to service interruptions and customer churn. Cloud-agnostic infrastructure is the solution. - Avoid Capacity Constraints: A multi-cloud setup typically is the key. - Optimize Costs: Run R&D workloads on cost-effective providers while hosting mission-critical workloads on more reliable ones. The What What does "cloud-agnostic" mean? It involves selecting a technology stack that works seamlessly across all major cloud providers and bare-metal environments. Kubernetes is a strong choice here. The transformation process typically includes: 1. Workload Analysis: Understanding the needs and constraints. 2. Infrastructure Design: Creating a cloud-agnostic architecture tailored to your needs. 3. Validation and Implementation: Testing and refining the design with the technical team. 4. Deployment and Migration: Ensuring smooth migration with minimal disruption. The How Here’s how hands-on transformation happens: 1. Testing Environment: The DevOps team implements a fine-tuned test environment for development and QA teams. 2. Functional Testing: Engineers and QA ensure performance expectations are met or exceeded. 3. Stress Testing: The team conducts stress tests to confirm horizontal scaling. 4. Migration Planning: Detailed migration and rollback plans are created before execution. This end-to-end transformation typically takes 3–6 months. The outcomes? - 99.99% uptime. - 40%-60% cost reduction. - Flexibility to switch cloud providers. Why Now? With growing demands on infrastructure, flexibility is essential. If your organization hasn’t explored cloud-agnostic infrastructure yet, now’s the time to start. At Cloudchipr, we’ve helped many organizations achieve 99.99% uptime and 40%-60% cost reduction. Ping me if you want to discuss how we can help you with anything cloud-related.