AKS Transform: Modernise Legacy Apps on Azure Kubernetes Service - 8Wk Implementation

Our 'AKS Transform' service bundle is essential when modernising applications on Azure Kubernetes Service. Even with a monolithic application, realise the immediate benefit of implementing an engineered model to re-platform your application that leverages an infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD Pipelines and Azure Kubernetes Service, automated build/test/deploy pipelines, self-healing, auto-scaling and 0% downtime incremental deployments.

Program Schedule: Week 1: Discovery & Setup

• Application Analysis: Understand the architecture, components, dependencies, and data flows of the existing application.
• Kubernetes Compatibility: Evaluate the application's compatibility with Azure Kubernetes. Some applications might need to be redesigned to fit the cloud native and containerisation model.
• Dependency Definition: Validate pre-requisites for AKS deployment in target environment and discuss the dependencies.
• Requirements Definition: Validate the networking, storage, compute, and security requirements/configuration
• Dependencies resolved and access setup

Week 2-3: Design

• Containerization: Plan how to convert application components into Docker containers to ensure they can run in a Azure Kubernetes environment.
• Container Orchestration Design: Plan how the application components will be grouped into pods, services, and deployments.
• Target Architecture: Design the AKS cluster and application components breakdown.
• Deployment Strategy: Plan how the deployment of the infrastructure and application components will work.

Week 4-5: Build

• Infrastructure Setup: Build the infrastructure as code (IaC) to provision the cluster and cloud components.
• Configuration Files: Create Azure Kubernetes manifests (YAML files) to define deployment, services, ingress, and other resources.
• ConfigMap and Secret: Manage application configuration using Kubernetes ConfigMaps and Secrets.
• Stateful Applications: If your application has stateful components, plan for persistent storage using Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims.
• Kubernetes Cluster: Set up the Azure Kubernetes cluster components in AKS.
• Networking and Security: Configure networking, load balancing, RBAC, and security policies for the cluster.
• Secret Management: Configure and integrate with Azure Key Vault.
• Automated Builds: Set up automated Docker image builds for application components and infrastructure builds for the infrastructure components.
• Deployment Automation: Integrate deployment processes with CI/CD tools for seamless updates.

Week 6: Deployment

• Application Stack Deployment: Deployment of the AKS cluster components in the target client environment
• Scalability and Load Balancing: Configure Azure Kubernetes to automatically scale application instances based on demand and implement load balancing to distribute incoming traffic across application instances.
• Monitoring and Logging: Install and integrate with Grafana & Prometheus
• Testing and QA: Functional and Non-Functional testing to verify that the application components work well together in the Kubernetes environment and to ensure the application can handle expected loads and perform efficiently.

Week 7: Value Showcase

• Demonstrate auto scaling and self-healing capabilities
• Demonstrate the standard dashboards used for monitoring
• Planning: Recommendations for next steps
• Documentation: Handover solution design and deployment documentation.

Week 8: User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

• Involve Stakeholders: Have end-users test the application in the Microsoft Azure Kubernetes environment to validate functionality.
• Issue Resolution: Address any issues that arise during the UAT period.