Building PowerShell Microservices on AKS, Because Yes, PowerShell Can Do That Too! š
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I love exploring the boundaries of what PowerShell can do, from serverless automation to secure cloud integrations. Today, weāre taking things in a slightly different directionā¦ straight into the world of Kubernetes!
Lately, Iāve been experimenting a lot with containerized workloads and microservices, and I thought: why not PowerShell? So here we are! Diving into how you can run PowerShell-based microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Before we go any further: this post is not about when or why you should run certain workloads in AKS. Iām not going to debate architectural patterns, cost efficiency, or whether containers are the ārightā choice for your app. Weāre skipping all that.
Instead, this blog has one simple mission:
š Show you whatās possible with PowerShell, yes, even building microservices that run inside Kubernetes!
From container images to deployment tips, Iāll walk you through how PowerShell fits into a modern cloud-native setup. Because PowerShell isnāt ājust a scripting languageā, itās an incredibly flexible automation engine that can surprise you in the best ways.
During this post, you’ll see this icon š¬, which indicates that action is required so you get the full benefit out of this post.And I’ve introduced the š, which indicates that the subsequent part explains the technical details in the context of this post.
Letās get rolling, but first weāll start with some Theory!
This is just part 1 where weāll lay down the foundation of a series off blogs, stay tuned! Itās gonna be interesting š
What is AKS?
If youāve ever tried to run multiple applications, scripts, APIs, schedulers, and background jobs all at once, you know it can quickly feel like trying to herd a flock of sheep. Enter AKS, Azure Kubernetes Service!
AKS is basically Azureās fully managed orchestration platform for containers. Think of it as a giant ādigital warehouseā filled with workers (nodes) whose only job is to run your applications in neatly organized shipping boxes (containers). You tell AKS what you want to run, how many copies you need, and how it should behaveā¦ and AKS does the rest.
Hereās the magic:
- It automatically distributes workloads across machines
- It restarts containers if they fail
- It scales up when thereās heavy work and scales down when things are quiet
- It provides load balancing, networking, and security
- It keeps everything consistent, repeatable, and predictable
If the cloud were a factory, AKS would be the robot-powered assembly line making sure everything runs exactly as you designed it, no excuses, no chaos.
And yesā¦ you can run PowerShell inside this factory. š
Find more information here:
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
What are containers?
Containers are the heart of modern cloud architecture. But what are they, really?
Imagine you want to ship a fragile product across the world. You donāt just throw it on a truck and hope for the best, you pack it into a strong shipping container that protects it from weather, turbulence, and rough handling. š¢š¦
Software containers work the same way.
A container packages:
- Your application (PowerShell, Python, .NET, anything)
- All its dependencies
- Its runtime environment
- Its configuration
- Its filesystem
Everything it needs to run, in one portable box.
This means:
- Wherever you run the containerā¦ it behaves exactly the same
- No ābut it worked on my laptopā moments
- No dependency conflicts
- No missing modules or runtime mismatches
- No installing software on servers manually
A container is basically a self-contained mini-computer for one job.
And PowerShell is perfectly capable of becoming the āengineā inside that container. You just wrap your script or API inside a container image, ship it to AKS, and Kubernetes executes it like a well-prepared meal coming out of a lunchbox.
What are microservices?
To really understand microservices, letās go on a little journey.
Imagine you walk into a mega-restaurant, the kind that serves pizza, sushi, burgers, desserts, cocktails, and somehow also sells coffee to go. Now imagine that one kitchen is responsible for preparing all of that. One giant stove. One massive fridge. One team trying to juggle every meal at every moment.
Thatās a monolithic application, everything bundled together, tightly coupled, sharing the same codebase, the same resources, and often the same headaches. When something goes wrong, everything slows down. When you need to change one small ingredient, you risk breaking five other dishes.
Now picture a different kind of restaurant: a āfood hallā with multiple small shops. Each one specializes in only one thing, the sushi place does sushi, the burger stand does burgers, the bar does drinks, the bakery does pastries.
These are microservices.
Each microservice:
- has its own kitchen
- its own tools
- its own team
- and its own menu
If the sushi chef calls in sick, the burger shop still runs. If the bakery needs a new oven, no other shop is affected. If the bar suddenly gets flooded with customers, you simply add more bartenders instead of hiring more chefs everywhere.
Now replace the āfood hallā with your application ecosystem, and thatās exactly how microservices work. Instead of building one giant application that does everything, you build many small applications, each responsible for a single capability, and each running independently, communicating through APIs or messages.
- A user service handles identities.
- A billing service processes payments.
- An email service sends notifications.
- A reporting service aggregates data.
- A PowerShell microservice performs automation tasks.
Each service is small, focused, and deployable on its own timeline.
This architecture gives you resilience (one service failing doesnāt take down the entire system), agility (you can modernize piece by piece), and scalability (you scale only the services that need it, not the entire monolith).
If a microservice were a person, it would be that colleague who has one job, does it extremely well, and never gets distracted doing ten other things. Itās simple, predictable, and incredibly reliable, especially when you begin deploying them across Kubernetes.
And the best part?
You can build these microservices in PowerShell, package them into containers, and run them on AKS just like any other modern cloud-native component.
Microservices arenāt about complexity, theyāre about letting each piece of your system shine on its own, without dragging the rest along.
Setting up AKS
š” Before we start, make sure you have Azure CLI installed and you are logged in to your tenant š
Well, now that weāve finally completed the required theory for this part, we can start actually doing something. š
Before we can create our first PowerShell-driven microservice, we need to have AKS.
Iāll provide you with 2 options, one is the āLet me deploy it for you functionality, or you do it āmanually.ā
Let me deploy it for you
Use the deployment button below so I can deploy it for you:
Enter like something below:
Deploy it manually
š¬ Follow the steps below to deploy things manually.
- Deploy an Azure Container Registry
- Provide the settings needed
And deploy!
Now we need to deploy AKS service
- Find AKS in the Azure Marketplace
- Provide the settings (those not shown can be default)
- Make sure the container registry is selected
- Deploy š
Result
You should end up with Kubernetes Service and a container registry as shown below:
Summary
We didnāt wrestle a YAML octopus today, we didnāt become Kubernetes grandmasters overnight, and we definitely didnāt rewrite the PowerShell universeā¦
But we did take our first big step into running PowerShell in a place many people never expect to see it: inside Azure Kubernetes Service. šš
Hereās what you walk away with:
šÆ You learned what AKS really is:
Azureās fully managed, container-running, auto-healing, auto-scaling orchestration powerhouse, the robot factory that keeps your apps neatly boxed, deployed, and behaving exactly as you told them to (even when they donāt want to).
š¦ You understood containers without the buzzwords:
Theyāre shipping boxes for your code, self-contained, consistent, predictable, drama-free.
No āit works on my laptop,ā no dependency puzzles, just a clean PowerShell runtime ready to run anywhere you drop it.
š± You got the microservices mindset:
Not one mega-kitchen trying to cook every dish on Earth, but a food hall, small, focused, independent services.
- Each with its own job.
- Each deployable on its own timeline.
And yesā¦ one of those services can absolutely be PowerShell.
š You set up the foundation:
Whether you chose the āDo it for meā deployment button or the manual Azure CLI + portal path, you now have:
āļø An Azure Container Registry
āļø An AKS cluster
āļø A clean, cloud-ready playground for your future PowerShell microservices
š And the big picture:
This was just Part 1 of the series, laying the groundwork, setting up AKS, and getting your environment ready for the fun stuff.
Because next time?
š„ We build your first PowerShell microservice
š„ We containerize it
š„ We deploy it to AKS
š„ And youāll see PowerShell running as a real microservice in the wild
Get readyā¦ the adventure is just getting started. š