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Azure Container Registry – also known as ACR – is a private registry for Docker container images. It is a managed Docker registry service based on the open source Docker registry platform. ACR can manage both Windows and Linux images, providing developers the flexibility to choose the platform and workloads to run within their containers. In this Docker tutorial, we will walk you through the steps to deploy an Azure Container Registry instance in Azure portal.
Why Should Developers Use Azure Container Registry?
The Azure Container Instance offers a plethora of services, including Azure Container Service, Container Registry, Web Apps for Containers, and Service Fabric. All of these are services that can help .NET developers easily deploy and run containerized web apps in the cloud.
Using Azure Container Registry, cloud developers can make sure that their apps will run correctly, won’t shut down or timeout, and programmers do not need to worry about security, as Microsoft will take care of the safety of the contents. Moreover, using registers, coders can build on demand or fully automate builds with triggers such as source code commits and base image updates.
Read: An Introduction to Container Adapters in C++
What are the Benefits of Container Registry?
Shifting from a Monolithic architecture to a Microservices architecture – or trying to migrate from ASP.net MVC to ASP.net core – using a containers based environment is the best option. Azure Container Service can manage containers without any special expertise required of the programmer. The service uses Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and DC/OS orchestrators, allowing developers to run and scale apps with ease without much cluster management overhead.
Some major advantages of an ACR is the ability to control who has access to what, scan for vulnerabilities, patch as needed, and require authentication of images, as well as users.
How to Create an Azure Container Registry
Developers have multiple ways to create a container registry in Azure. In this Container programming tutorial, I will be demonstrating ACR creation from the Azure Portal. To begin, login to your Azure account from https://portal.azure.com/. Search for Container Registry in the search box, then click Create New Resource once you locate the container registry:
Search “Container Registry”
Read: Security Challenges and Solutions for Microservices Architecture
In the next screen, you need to configure your registry, select your subscription, add the name of the registry, location, SKU, and enable/disable availability zones.
- Registry Name: A unique name for your registry.
- Subscription: The subscription which you have or the one which you prefer to use.
- Resource Group: Select an existing resource group or a new one if required.
- Location: Select an Azure data center location where the service is available.
Create Container Registry
Under the Networking tab, note that you will not be able to configure connectivity to connect to this registry either publicly or privately, so leave this at default:
Container Registry Networking Tab
Next, in the Encryption tab, note that the Azure Container Registry service encryption protects the data by encrypting the images pushed to your registry and automatically decrypts when you pull them. Remember, Customer-Managed Key is only available for Premium SKU members:
Container Registry Encryption
In the Tags tab, add any tags you might require, if any. Finally, in the Review + Create tab click Create to finalize the creation of your container registry:
Container Registry Preview and Create
Read more Azure and cloud computing tutorials for .NET developers.
