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Azure Container Workshop

Welcome to a docs-first Azure container workshop for beginners covering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Apps.

The examples use a lightweight healthcare Patient Triage Assistant scenario so the workshop stays consistent across deployment, scaling, networking, observability, and job labs. The demo app uses Python/FastAPI for the backend and React for the frontend, with a model deployed in Microsoft Foundry powering AI-based patient urgency classification.

Workshop source repository: beyondelastic/azure-container-workshop

This workshop is intentionally small, practical, and tied to official Microsoft documentation. Each section includes:

  • a clear goal
  • official reference links
  • step-by-step exercises with CLI commands
  • expected results
  • a short verification checklist

Official by default

Every core exercise is mapped to Microsoft Learn or official Azure documentation.

Built for beginners

Each exercise is small, verifiable, and sequenced so the workshop can be taught live or followed alone.

What this workshop covers

# Lesson Section
00 Prerequisites —
01 Your First AKS Deployment AKS
02 Services & Networking AKS
03 Scaling & Configuration AKS
04 Monitoring & Observability AKS
05 AKS Automatic AKS
06 Your First Container App Container Apps
07 Scaling & Revisions Container Apps
08 Multi-Container & Dapr Container Apps
09 Jobs & Background Processing Container Apps

Design goals

  • Keep the flow easy to follow.
  • Favour official documentation over custom theory.
  • Keep examples short and runnable.
  • Use a lightweight docs-first web UI.

Demo app: Patient Triage Assistant

graph LR
    U[User] --> FE[React Frontend]
    FE --> BE[FastAPI Backend]
    BE --> AI[Microsoft Foundry]
    AI --> BE
    BE --> FE
    W[Worker Job] --> AI

The Patient Triage Assistant accepts patient symptoms, sends them to a model in Microsoft Foundry for urgency classification (Critical / High / Medium / Low), and displays a color-coded triage queue. A background worker demonstrates batch processing for Container Apps Jobs.

Official sources used

Repository layout

.
├── docs/                  ← lesson pages (served by MkDocs)
├── app/
│   ├── backend/           ← Python FastAPI service
│   ├── frontend/          ← React (Vite) UI
│   └── worker/            ← Python batch worker
├── manifests/
│   ├── aks/               ← Kubernetes YAML manifests
│   └── container-apps/    ← Bicep templates
├── mkdocs.yml
├── requirements.txt
└── SETUP.md

Quick start

  1. Create a Python virtual environment.
  2. Install dependencies.
  3. Sign in to Azure.
  4. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your values.
  5. Start the docs UI with mkdocs serve.

Detailed steps are in SETUP.md.

Run the workshop UI

mkdocs serve

Then open the local URL shown in the terminal, usually http://127.0.0.1:8000.