Summary
In this module, you learned about AKS Edge Essentials, a lightweight AKS hybrid solution for running Kubernetes on PC-class or "light" edge hardware. It offers a small resource footprint and simple installation experience, making it easy to get started with containerized applications. AKS Edge Essentials supports both Linux and Windows containers and can be managed using Azure Arc. It provides features like a lightweight K8S and K3S distribution, secure container infrastructure, and automatic updates.
Our goal was to help you evaluate whether AKS Edge Essentials would be appropriate to automate and run your containerized applications and the opportunities it can create for your business. We developed some criteria you can use to guide your decision:
- High availability at the infrastructure layer
- Compute and memory requirements
- Fixed purpose device
- 10-year Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)
We applied these criteria to our fictional grocery store chain. The analysis helped us see that AKS Edge Essentials is used on PC-class devices in exchange of high availability at the infrastructure layer. The analysis also helped us see when it would be appropriate to use Windows IoT Enterprise with a 10-year Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for the host OS.