How to Build an End-to-End CI/CD Pipeline Using Azure DevOps, Docker, and AKS

Cloud-native application development, teams struggle to maintain consistent, automated, and scalable deployment workflows.

1. Problem Statement

In modern cloud-native application development, teams struggle to maintain consistent, automated, and scalable deployment workflows. Manual build and deployment processes lead to:

• Frequent human errors

• Deployment delays

• Inconsistent environments

• Lack of traceability and visibility

Organizations face challenges in:

• Seamlessly integrating code from GitHub

• Automating the Docker image creation and publishing

• Deploying the application into a production-grade Kubernetes environment

• Managing secure, scalable, and repeatable CI/CD pipelines

• Setting up self-hosted agents to optimize cost and performance

There is a critical need for an end-to-end CI/CD pipeline that connects source code to production deployment using modern DevOps tools like Azure DevOps, Docker, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

This use case aims to address these challenges by building a robust, automated pipeline that:

• Builds code from GitHub

• Creates Docker images and pushes to Docker Hub

• Deploys to AKS using Kubernetes manifests

• Uses a self-hosted agent for cost-efficient and controlled execution

The goal is to empower developers and operations teams to deliver faster, safer, and more reliable software deployments.

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2. Why We Need This Use Case

Modern applications demand rapid deployment, continuous feedback, and high availability. Manual deployments are time-consuming and error-prone. To address this, enterprises and developers are adopting CI/CD pipelines integrated with containerization and orchestration tools.

This use case enables:

• Full automation of build, test, and deployment lifecycle

• Faster delivery of new features through pipelines

• Reliable deployment to Kubernetes clusters using containerized apps

• End-to-end management of infrastructure from source code to Kubernetes cluster

This bridges gaps between development and operations, increases agility, and ensures application resilience.

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3. When We Need This Use Case

You will need this setup when:

• Building and deploying container-based apps using Azure DevOps + Docker + Kubernetes

• You want to implement GitHub-to-Kubernetes deployment using CI/CD

• Need custom self-hosted agents for consistent builds inside your Azure VM

• Automating deployment of microservices to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

• You are mentoring or training teams on enterprise DevOps automation pipelines

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4. Challenge Questions