← Back to case studies

Case Study

AKS Modernization: From Out-of-Support Clusters to Zero-Downtime Delivery

Re-architected legacy AKS into a modern, automated platform with Key Vault integration, ingress automation, autoscaling, and full alerting managed through Terraform and Helm.

AzureAKSTerraformHelmDevOpsCloudOps

Challenge

The client’s AKS footprint had fallen behind: clusters were out of support, maintenance was inconsistent, and critical capabilities were missing. There was no integrated secrets flow, no ingress automation, no autoscaling, and no unified alerting. Releases required paperwork-heavy planning and late-night downtime windows, with frequent incidents impacting application availability.

Approach

  • Designed a modern AKS architecture leveraging AI-first IaC code generation with senior architect oversight.
  • Implemented automated cluster maintenance and lifecycle operations.
  • Integrated secrets management with Azure Key Vault.
  • Introduced automated ingress configuration and deployment orchestration via Helm.
  • Enabled autoscaling policies and production alerting across workloads.
  • Standardized platform delivery and governance through Terraform + Helm chart patterns.

Outcomes

  • Incident-caused downtime was eliminated.
  • Zero-downtime deployments became the default path to production.
  • Release timing shifted from paperwork windows to code readiness.
  • Engineering teams reclaimed time previously spent on after-hours release bridges.