faq.md

AKS Engine FAQ

This page provides help with the most common questions about AKS Engine.

What's the Difference Between AKS and AKS Engine?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a Microsoft Azure service that supports fully managed Kubernetes clusters. AKS Engine is an Azure open source project that creates Kubernetes clusters with your custom requirements. AKS uses AKS Engine internally, but they are not the same.

AKS clusters can be created in the Azure portal or with az aks create in the Azure command-line tool. AKS Engine clusters can be created with aks-engine deploy in the AKS Engine command-line tool, or by generating the ARM templates with aks-engine generate and deploying them as a separate step.

What's the Difference Between acs-engine and aks-engine?

AKS Engine is the next version of the ACS-Engine project. AKS Engine supports current and future versions of Kubernetes, while ACS-Engine also supported the Docker Swarm and Mesos DC/OS container orchestrators.

Can I Scale or Upgrade an acs-engine Cluster with aks-engine?

Yes.

Is ACS-Engine Still Active?

No further development or releases in ACS-Engine are planned. AKS Engine is a backward-compatible continuation of ACS-Engine, so all fixes and new features will target AKS Engine.

Can I Build an AKS Cluster with aks-engine?

No, Azure Kubernetes Service itself is the way to create a supported, managed AKS cluster. AKS Engine shares some code with AKS, but does not create managed clusters.

Should I use the latest aks-engine release if I was previously using acs-engine?

Yes. aks-engine v0.27.0 is a continuation of acs-engine v0.26.2 with all the Kubernetes fixes and features included in v0.26.2 and more.