What is Azure Container Instances

Azure Container Instances (ACI) allows us to deploy individual containers in Azure without having to provision Virtual Machines.

It is kind of a serverless computing environment where we can deploy our applications as Docker containers in Azure Container Instances. 

Azure Container Instances enables exposing the applications in our container groups directly to the internet with an IP address and a fully qualified domain name. We can deploy small/medium size web applications as Containers in Azure Container Instances and expose them to the internet without the need for a Virtual Machine or a hosting plan. 

Containers are typically optimized to run just a single application, but the exact needs of those applications can differ greatly. Azure Container Instances provide optimum utilization by allowing exact specifications of CPU cores and memory. 

For scenarios where you need full container orchestration, including service discovery across multiple containers, automatic scaling, and coordinated application upgrades, we recommend Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) can use the Virtual Kubelet to provision pods inside ACI that start in seconds. This enables AKS to run with just enough capacity for your average workload. As you run out of capacity in your AKS cluster, scale out additional pods in ACI without any additional servers to manage.