Azure Container Apps - Serverless Containers

What is Azure Container Apps?

Azure Container Apps is a serverless container platform from Microsoft Azure that allows you to run containerized applications without Kubernetes cluster management. The service combines the flexibility of containers with the simplicity of serverless: you deploy container images, Azure handles scaling, networking, load balancing, and infrastructure. Unlike Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you do not need Kubernetes knowledge and do not manage nodes.

The core of Container Apps is the Environment, a security and network boundary where multiple Container Apps run. Within an environment, apps can communicate via service discovery, share VNET integration and logs. Each Container App consists of one or more containers (multi-container support) that deploy as a revision. Revisions are immutable: every update creates a new revision, old ones remain available for traffic splitting or rollback.

A key differentiator is KEDA integration (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling): Container Apps scale not only on HTTP traffic but also on events like Azure Queue length, Kafka topics, RabbitMQ, cron schedules, or custom metrics. This enables scale-to-zero during inactivity (0 costs) and automatic scale-up under load. Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) is natively integrated for microservices patterns like Service Invocation, Pub/Sub, or State Management without implementing your own service meshes.

Typical Use Cases

Microservices Architecture Without Kubernetes Complexity

E-commerce platforms with 20+ microservices (Product-Service, Cart-Service, Payment-Service) deploy on Container Apps instead of AKS to avoid Kubernetes overhead. Each service is a Container App with its own scaling profile. Frontend services scale on HTTP requests, backend workers on queue length. Dapr enables service-to-service communication without hardcoded URLs. Deployment via Bicep or Terraform, no YAML manifests.

Event-Driven Background Workers

SaaS platforms process async jobs (PDF generation, image resize, email sending) via Azure Queue Storage or Service Bus. Container Apps with KEDA scaling scale worker containers based on queue length: 0 replicas on empty queue, up to 30 replicas on peaks. Costs only incur during processing. Alternative to Azure Functions for workloads running longer than 10 minutes or with complex dependencies.

API Backends for Mobile Apps

Mobile apps (iOS, Android) communicate with REST APIs running as Container Apps. Auto-scaling on HTTP traffic guarantees performance during peak times (e.g., Black Friday). VNET integration protects backend databases (Azure SQL, Cosmos DB) from public access. Managed Identity for passwordless authentication. Ingress with TLS termination and custom domains. Scale-to-zero for dev/test environments saves costs.

Benefits

• No cluster management or Kubernetes knowledge required
• Scale-to-zero for cost optimization during inactivity
• Native Dapr and KEDA integration for microservices patterns
• Revisions enable Blue-Green and Canary deployments

Integration with innFactory

As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, innFactory supports you with migration and optimization of Container Apps. We help with architecture design, Dapr implementation, KEDA scaling, and multi-region deployments.