Microsoft announced earlier this month that it will be retiring Azure Container Service (ACS) on January 31, 2020, and will gradually be replaced by Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) .
ACS was released more than two years ago with support for running Docker containerized applications. ACS uses Mesosphere's open source DC/OS platform.
Microsoft first started offering AKS in June. AKS is basically ACS, with support for Kubernetes.
ACS users will still see their apps working on January 31, 2020. However, many new creation features that use ACS will be blocked. Microsoft will abandon software development efforts for ACS.
Additionally, Microsoft has dropped its development support for the acs-engine project. It is now focusing more on aks-engine. aks-engine provides backward compatibility for acs-engine implementations, Microsoft explained. New clusters should start using aks-engine, the company recommends.
Microsoft proposed three migration scenarios for ACS users, ahead of the January 31, 2020 deadline:
- ACS users with Kubernetes should “move to Azure Kubernetes Service or the open source aks-engine project”
- ACS users with Docker should “move to Basic or Standard/Advanced Docker Enterprise Edition for Azure”
- ACS DC/OS users should “move to Mesosphere DC/OS Enterprise or Mesosphere DC/OS Open Source”
The rather confusing announcement regarding Microsoft's end of support for ACS was spotted by journalist Mary Jo Foley. An attempted end of support by Microsoft, however, was spotted back in March.
Microsoft also has a separate service, Azure Container Instances, which launched in April. It's a so-called "serverless Kubernetes" solution that relieves organizations of the burden of creating and maintaining virtual machines.
Microsoft also announced this week that “Azure Monitor for Containers” is almost ready to be released to users. It provides support for monitoring the “health and performance of Kubernetes clusters” hosted on AKS.
