Foreword

Over the last couple of years, we have seen Azure evolve from a simple .NET-based platform to an open and flexible platform, supporting the broadest selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) workloads. As a result, Azure is growing at an amazing rate with both existing and new customers.

Today, there is not a single industry that does not consider making use of the cloud in one form or another, from big compute to Dev/Test to SaaS solutions. For IT and developers, flexibility and agility are the number one reason for adopting Azure. A typical pattern of customers adopting Azure is to start with dev/test scenarios, followed by moving existing applications to run IaaS-based hybrid scenarios, and eventually developing new applications to take full advantage of the cloud platform.

The Azure cloud infrastructure is now in a place where it provides the flexibility to accommodate almost every scenario. Thus, customers have realized that their application design is now the limiting factor. Many customers still have a monolithic application design in place that makes it hard to independently update, version, deploy, and scale individual application components. Therefore, despite the cloud being extremely agile and flexible, the application itself limits the agility needed to react quickly to market trends and customer demands.

Over the last couple of months, microservices-based applications have become the most talked-about new architectural design, enabling previously impossible agility and ease of management. Docker containers turn out to be a perfect technology to enable microservice-based applications, from a density, DevOps, and open technology perspective. When coupled with Docker, microservices-based applications are a game changer when it comes to modern application development in the cloud.

I’m really excited that Azure offers the foundational technology and higher-level services to support any type of microservices-based application. You can build applications using Docker containers on Apache Mesos with Marathon/Chronos/Swarm or you can build applications on our own native microservices application platform, Service Fabric. Azure offers the right choice for your scenario.

Whether you have just gotten your feet wet with containers or microservices, or you have already advanced in that subject, this book will help you understand how to build containerized microservices-based applications on Azure. Beyond just describing the basics, this book dives into some of the best practices each aspiring microservices developer or architect should know. Boris, Trent, and Dan are the very best people to walk through both the basics and the advanced topics! All of them have deep real-world experience building applications using these models, and amazing product insight on Azure and the cloud. I am excited to see what you can build using the skills they share in these pages!

—Corey Sanders
Partner Director of Program Management, Azure