Introduction to ACR
Years ago, when it was needed to instance a VM, the first thing that we had to struggle with was where to get the VM image from, how to copy it across the network, and how to share them (which are large in volume). Docker has got the concept of images and to get those images they have built this ‘Registry concept.’ The Registry concept allows anyone to pull things with a content addressable URL and it has some other defined detailed layers and features as well. This same concept has been used in the Azure container registry.
Azure Container Registry(ACR) allows you to build, store, and manage container images and artifacts in a private registry for all types of container deployments. Azure container registries can be used with the existing container development and DevOps pipelines. The task of the ACR are to build container images in Azure on-demand or automate builds triggered by source code updates, updates to a container’s base image, or timers. With ACR, it’s more than just a private repository, some of the advantages are under your control as well. You can secure access to the containers. They’re stored encrypted, so you’ve got that lockdown for your corporate images if you will. And another advantage is this feature called tasks, which allows you to leverage the cloud to build these containers.
Azure Container Registry supports geo-replication, which replicates the service across multiple regions which on other hand helps the customers to enhance the reliability and performance. Geo-replication enables an Azure container registry to function as a single registry, serving multiple regions with multi-master regional registries. This concept improves the performance and reliability of regional deployments with network-close registry access. Single registry, image, and tag names can be used across multiple regions.
To enforce security rules there are azure built-in policies. They are as follows.
01.Encrypted with customer-managed keys: Container Registries should not allow unrestricted network access. Audit Container Registries that do not have any network rules configured and allow all network access by default.
02. Not allow unrestricted network access: Container Registries with at least one IP or firewall rule or configured virtual network will be deemed compliant.
03. Use private links: Clients in a virtual network can securely access resources that have private endpoint connections through private links.
As the industry began to adopt the cloud, container orchestration became a major pain point of development. Azure has entered the field with its respective services. ACR is one of them. After all, the idea of the cloud has been the main focus of software since the past decade, reshaping the way software is built and operated. Microsoft Azure container registries simply ameliorate the experience in its innovative ways. Security features, usability, performance are some of the quality attributes that were key to the success of ACR. ACR which is built around cloud architecture has to provide high-security facilities for data it stores rather than its performance. In such a case, performance has become a trade-off. When compared to many other alternative products in the market, ACR able to stay competitive with the help of unique features within security, performance-like quality attributes. The common goal has been, to simplify container orchestration while still retaining the required flexibility to facilitate the multitude of use-cases of developers in their journey to the cloud, and hence advancing cloud adoption in general. Azure container registries are one example of that goal accomplishment.
