Azure Containers

While virtual machines are an excellent way to reduce costs versus the investments that are necessary for physical hardware, they're still limited to a single operating system per virtual machine. If you want to run multiple instances of an application on a single host machine, containers are an excellent choice.

Azure Container Instances

Azure Container Instances offer the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure; without having to manage any virtual machines or adopt any additional services. Azure Container Instances is a platform as a service (PaaS) offering. Azure Container Instances allow you to upload your containers and then the service will run the containers for you.

Use containers in your solutions

Containers are often used to create solutions by using a microservice architecture. This architecture is where you break solutions into smaller, independent pieces. For example, you might split a website into a container hosting your front end, another hosting your back end, and a third for storage. This split allows you to separate portions of your app into logical sections that can be maintained, scaled, or updated independently.

Imagine your website's back-end has reached capacity but the front end and storage aren't being stressed. With containers, you could scale the back end separately to improve performance. If something necessitated such a change, you could also choose to change the storage service or modify the front end without impacting any of the other components.