Cloud Native Briefing — Azure Container Apps General Availability
Microsoft announced Azure Container Apps GA on May 24, 2022, delivering a serverless container platform built on Kubernetes, KEDA, and Dapr for microservices and event-driven workloads.
Executive briefing: At Microsoft Build, Azure announced Container Apps reached general availability on . The service abstracts Kubernetes infrastructure while exposing scale-to-zero, HTTP ingress, and microservices patterns with Dapr sidecars.
Key features
- Serverless containers. Apps scale from zero to peak based on HTTP or event triggers using KEDA-powered autoscaling.
- Microservices patterns. Built-in Dapr integration provides service invocation, pub/sub, secrets, and state management APIs.
- Managed platform. Microsoft operates the underlying Kubernetes cluster, Envoy ingress, and revisions model, reducing operational overhead.
Implementation guidance
- Candidate workloads. Target stateless APIs, event processors, and background jobs currently running on AKS or Functions with sporadic demand.
- Deployment pipelines. Use Azure CLI, Bicep, or GitHub Actions to define managed environments and revisions under infrastructure-as-code.
- Observability. Integrate Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Distributed Application Tracing for diagnostics across Dapr components.
Enablement moves
- Educate platform teams on Container Apps pricing, revision routing, and environment isolation.
- Establish policy guardrails via Azure Policy to control image registries, networking, and secrets providers.
- Measure developer outcomes against AKS baselines to determine where Container Apps simplifies operations.