AZ-204 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure Questions and Answers

Before you can connect to on-premises data sources from Azure Logic Apps, download and install the on-premises data gateway on a local computer. The gateway works as a bridge that provides quick data transfer and encryption between data sources on premises (not in the cloud) and your logic apps.

The gateway supports BizTalk Server 2016.

Note: Microsoft have now fully incorporated the Azure BizTalk Services capabilities into Logic Apps and Azure App Service Hybrid Connections.

Logic Apps Enterprise Integration pack bring some of the enterprise B2B capabilities like AS2 and X12, EDI standards support

Scenario: The Shipping Logic app must meet the following requirements:

• Support the ocean transport and inland transport workflows by using a Logic App.
• Support industry-standard protocol X12 message format for various messages including vessel content details and arrival notices.
• Secure resources to the corporate VNet and use dedicated storage resources with a fixed costing model.
• Maintain on-premises connectivity to support legacy applications and final BizTalk migrations.

Plan: Standard

Standard support auto-scaling

Instance Count: 10

Max instances for standard is 10.

Scenario:

The REST API’s that support the solution must meet the following requirements:

• Allow deployment to a testing location within Azure while not incurring additional costs.
• Automatically scale to double capacity during peak shipping times while not causing application downtime.
• Minimize costs when selecting an Azure payment model.

References:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/plans/

Box 1: RepositoryUpdated

When a new version of the ContentAnalysisService is available the previous seven days of content must be processed with the new version to verify that the new version does not significantly deviate from the old version.

Box 2: service

Box 3: imageCollection

Scenario: All Internal services must only be accessible from Internal Virtual Networks (VNets)

There are three Network Location types – Private, Public and Domain

Scenario: An alert must be raised if the ContentUploadService uses more than 80 percent of available CPU-cores

Application Insights provides three additional data types for custom telemetry:

Trace - used either directly, or through an adapter to implement diagnostics logging using an instrumentation

framework that is familiar to you, such as Log4Net or System.Diagnostics.

Event - typically used to capture user interaction with your service, to analyze usage patterns.

Metric - used to report periodic scalar measurements.

Scenario:

Policy service must use Application Insights to automatically scale with the number of policy actions that it is

performing.

Box 1:WebHook

Scenario: If an anomaly is detected, an Azure Function that emails administrators is called by using an HTTP WebHook.

endpointType: The type of endpoint for the subscription (webhook/HTTP, Event Hub, or queue).

Box 2: SubjectBeginsWith

Box 3: Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreated

Scenario: Log Policy

All Azure App Service Web Apps must write logs to Azure Blob storage. All log files should be saved to a container named logdrop. Logs must remain in the container for 15 days.

Example subscription schema

{

"properties": {

"destination": {

"endpointType": "webhook",

"properties": {

"endpointUrl": "https://example.azurewebsites.net/api/HttpTriggerCSharp1?code=VXbGWce53l48Mt8wuotr0GPmyJ/nDT4hgdFj9DpBiRt38qqnnm5OFg== "

}

},

"filter": {

"includedEventTypes": [ "Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreated", "Microsoft.Storage.BlobDeleted" ],

"subjectBeginsWith": "blobServices/default/containers/mycontainer/log",

"subjectEndsWith": ".jpg",

"isSubjectCaseSensitive ": "true"

}

}

}

Box 1: Valid root certificate

Scenario: All websites and services must use SSL from a valid root certificate authority.

Box 2: Azure Application Gateway

Scenario:

• Any web service accessible over the Internet must be protected from cross site scripting attacks.

• All Internal services must only be accessible from Internal Virtual Networks (VNets)
• All parts of the system must support inbound and outbound traffic restrictions.

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) on Azure Application Gateway provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. Web applications are increasingly targeted by malicious attacks that exploit commonly known vulnerabilities. SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the most common attacks.

Application Gateway supports autoscaling, SSL offloading, and end-to-end SSL, a web application firewall (WAF), cookie-based session affinity, URL path-based routing, multisite hosting, redirection, rewrite HTTP headers and other features.

Note: Both Nginx and Azure Application Gateway act as a reverse proxy with Layer 7 load‑balancing features plus a WAF to ensure strong protection against common web vulnerabilities and exploits.

You can modify Nginx web server configuration/SSL for X-XSS protection. This helps to prevent cross-site scripting exploits by forcing the injection of HTTP headers with X-XSS protection.

Box 1: "oauth2Permissions": ["login"]

oauth2Permissions specifies the collection of OAuth 2.0 permission scopes that the web API (resource) app exposes to client apps. These permission scopes may be granted to client apps during consent.

Box 2: "oauth2AllowImplicitFlow":true

For applications (Angular, Ember.js, React.js, and so on), Microsoft identity platform supports the OAuth 2.0 Implicit Grant flow.

Box 1: volumeMounts

Example:

volumeMounts:

- mountPath: /mnt/secrets

name: secretvolume1

volumes:

- name: secretvolume1

secret:

mysecret1: TXkgZmlyc3Qgc2VjcmV0IEZPTwo=

Box 2: volumes

Box 3: secret

Azure Functions can run on either a Consumption Plan or a dedicated App Service Plan. If you run in a dedicated mode, you need to turn on the Always On setting for your Function App to run properly. The Function runtime will go idle after a few minutes of inactivity, so only HTTP triggers will actually "wake up" your functions. This is similar to how WebJobs must have Always On enabled.

Scenario: Notification latency: Users report that anomaly detection emails can sometimes arrive several minutes after an anomaly is detected.

Anomaly detection service: You have an anomaly detection service that analyzes log information for anomalies. It is implemented as an Azure Machine Learning model. The model is deployed as a web service. If an anomaly is detected, an Azure Function that emails administrators is called by using an HTTP WebHook.

Scenario: All certificates and secrets used to secure data must be stored in Azure Key Vault.

You must adhere to the principle of least privilege and provide privileges which are essential to perform the intended function.

The Set-AzureRmKeyValutAccessPolicy parameter -PermissionsToKeys specifies an array of key operation permissions to grant to a user or service principal. The acceptable values for this parameter: decrypt, encrypt, unwrapKey, wrapKey, verify, sign, get, list, update, create, import, delete, backup, restore, recover, purge

Scenario: Users of the ContentUploadService report that they occasionally see HTTP 502 responses on specific pages.

"502 bad gateway" and "503 service unavailable" are common errors in your app hosted in Azure App Service.

Microsoft Azure publicizes each time there is a service interruption or performance degradation.

The az monitor activity-log command manages activity logs.

Note: Troubleshooting can be divided into three distinct tasks, in sequential order:

• Observe and monitor application behavior
• Collect data
• Mitigate the issue

Scenario: Audit store sale transaction information nightly to validate data, process sales financials, and reconcile inventory.

"Process the change feed logs of the Azure Blob storage account by using an Azure Function. Specify a time range for the change feed data": Change feed support is well-suited for scenarios that process data based on objects that have changed. For example, applications can:

Store, audit, and analyze changes to your objects, over any period of time, for security, compliance or intelligence for enterprise data management.

"Subscribe to blob storage events by using an Azure Function and Azure Event Grid. Filter the events by store location": Azure Storage events allow applications to react to events, such as the creation and deletion of blobs. It does so without the need for complicated code or expensive and inefficient polling services. The best part is you only pay for what you use.

Blob storage events are pushed using Azure Event Grid to subscribers such as Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, or even to your own http listener. Event Grid provides reliable event delivery to your applications through rich retry policies and dead-lettering.

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Box 1: [BlobTrigger(..)]

Box 2: [Blob(..)]

Azure Blob storage output binding for Azure Functions. The output binding allows you to modify and delete blob storage data in an Azure Function.

The attribute's constructor takes the path to the blob and a FileAccess parameter indicating read or write, as shown in the following example:

[FunctionName("ResizeImage")]

public static void Run(

[BlobTrigger("sample-images/{name}")] Stream image,

[Blob("sample-images-md/{name}", FileAccess.Write)] Stream imageSmall)

{

}

Scenario: You must create an Azure Function named CheckUserContent to perform the content checks.

The company’s data science group built ContentAnalysisService which accepts user generated content as a string and returns a probable value for inappropriate content. Any values over a specific threshold must be reviewed by an employee of Contoso, Ltd.

Scenario: You must perform a point-in-time restoration of the retail store location data due to an unexpected and accidental deletion of data.

Before you enable and configure point-in-time restore, enable its prerequisites for the storage account: soft delete, change feed, and blob versioning.

Scenario: All Azure Functions must centralize management and distribution of configuration data for different environments and geographies, encrypted by using a company-provided RSA-HSM key.

Microsoft Azure Key Vault is a cloud-hosted management service that allows users to encrypt keys and small secrets by using keys that are protected by hardware security modules (HSMs).

You need to create a managed identity for your application.

As a solution architect/developer, you should consider using Service Bus queues when:

• Your solution needs to receive messages without having to poll the queue. With Service Bus, you can achieve it by using a long-polling receive operation using the TCP-based protocols that Service Bus supports.

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Scenario: You test the Logic app in a development environment. The following error message displays:

'400 Bad Request'

Troubleshooting of the error shows an HttpTrigger action to call the RequestUserApproval function.

Note: If the inbound call's request body doesn't match your schema, the trigger returns an HTTP 400 Bad Request error.

Box 1: function

If you have an Azure function where you want to use the system-assigned identity, first enable authentication for Azure functions.

Box 2: system-assigned

Your logic app or individual connections can use either the system-assigned identity or a single user-assigned identity, which you can share across a group of logic apps, but not both.

Step 1: Create an integration account in the Azure portal

You can define custom metadata for artifacts in integration accounts and get that metadata during runtime for your logic app to use. For example, you can provide metadata for artifacts, such as partners, agreements, schemas, and maps - all store metadata using key-value pairs.

Step 2: Link the Logic App to the integration account

A logic app that's linked to the integration account and artifact metadata you want to use.

Step 3: Add partners, schemas, certificates, maps, and agreements

Step 4: Create a custom connector for the Logic App.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/logic-apps/logic-ap ps-enterprise-integration-metadata

Async operation tracking

The HTTP response mentioned previously is designed to help implement long-running HTTP async APIs with Durable Functions. This pattern is sometimes referred to as the polling consumer pattern.

Both the client and server implementations of this pattern are built into the Durable Functions HTTP APIs.

Function app

You perform local testing for the RequestUserApproval function. The following error message displays:

'Timeout value of 00:10:00 exceeded by function: RequestUserApproval'

The same error message displays when you test the function in an Azure development environment when you run the following Kusto query:

FunctionAppLogs

| where FunctionName = = "RequestUserApproval"

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/durable/durable-functions-http-features

Box 1: sid

Sid: Session ID, used for per-session user sign-out. Personal and Azure AD accounts.

Scenario: Manual review

To review content, the user must authenticate to the website portion of the ContentAnalysisService using their Azure AD credentials. The website is built using React and all pages and API endpoints require authentication. In order to review content a user must be part of a ContentReviewer role.

Box 2: email

Scenario: All completed reviews must include the reviewer’s email address for auditing purposes.

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Scenario: Retail store locations: Azure Functions must process data immediately when data is uploaded to Blob storage.

Box 1: HTTP

Binding configuration example: https:// .blob.core.windows.net

Box 2: Input

Read blob storage data in a function: Input binding

Box 3: Blob storage

The Blob storage trigger starts a function when a new or updated blob is detected.

Azure Functions integrates with Azure Storage via triggers and bindings. Integrating with Blob storage allows you to build functions that react to changes in blob data as well as read and write values.

Box 1: Yes

Code for CosmosDB, example:

// Parse the connection string and return a reference to the storage account.

CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(

CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("StorageConnectionString"));

// Create the table client.

CloudTableClient tableClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudTableClient();

// Retrieve a reference to the table.

CloudTable table = tableClient.GetTableReference("people");

// Create the TableOperation object that inserts the customer entity.

TableOperation insertOperation = TableOperation.Insert(customer1);

Box 2: No

A new record will always be added as TableOperation.Insert is used, instead of TableOperation.InsertOrReplace.

Box 3: No

No partition key is used.

Box 4: Yes

References:

https://docs.micr osoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/table-storage-how-to-use-dotnet

Box 1: role-based access control (RBAC)

Azure Storage supports authentication and authorization with Azure AD for the Blob and Queue services via Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC).

Scenario: File access must restrict access by IP, protocol, and Azure AD rights.

Box 2: change feed

The purpose of the change feed is to provide transaction logs of all the changes that occur to the blobs and the blob metadata in your storage account.

The file updates must be read-only, stored in the order in which they occurred, include only create, update, delete, and copy operations, and be retained for compliance reasons.

Scenario: Corporate website

While testing the site, the following error message displays:

CryptographicException: The system cannot find the file specified.

Step 1: Generate a certificate

Step 2: Upload the certificate to Azure Key Vault

Scenario: All SSL certificates and credentials must be stored in Azure Key Vault.

Step 3: Import the certificate to Azure App Service

Step 4: Update line SCO5 of Security.cs to include error handling and then redeploy the code

You can create a snapshot of a blob. A snapshot is a read-only version of a blob that's taken at a point in time. Once a snapshot has been created, it can be read, copied, or deleted, but not modified. Snapshots provide a way to back up a blob as it appears at a moment in time.

Scenario: Processing is performed by an Azure Function that uses version 2 of the Azure Function runtime. Once processing is completed, results are stored in Azure Blob Storage and an Azure SQL database. Then, an email summary is sent to the user with a link to the processing report. The link to the report must remain valid if the email is forwarded to another user.

Box 1: AzureServiceTokenProvider()

Box 2: tp.GetAccessTokenAsync("..")

Acquiring an access token is then quite easy. Example code:

private async Task GetAccessTokenAsync()

{

var tokenProvider = new AzureServiceTokenProvider();

return await tokenProvider.GetAccessTokenAsync("https://storage.azure.com/ ");

}

Box 1: eventgrid

To create event subscription use: az eventgrid event-subscription create

Box 2: event-subscription

Box 3: servicebusqueue

Scenario: Azure Service Bus and Azure Event Grid

Azure Event Grid must use Azure Service Bus for queue-based load leveling.

Events in Azure Event Grid must be routed directly to Service Bus queues for use in buffering.

Events from Azure Service Bus and other Azure services must continue to be routed to Azure Event Grid for processing.

Account Kind: StorageV2 (general-purpose v2)

Scenario: Azure Storage blob will be used (refer to the exhibit). Data storage costs must be minimized.

General-purpose v2 accounts: Basic storage account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Recommended for most scenarios using Azure Storage.

If you want to read the files in parallel, you cannot use forEach. Each of the async callback function calls does return a promise. You can await the array of promises that you'll get with Promise.all.

Scenario: Capacity issue: During busy periods, employees report long delays between the time they upload the receipt and when it appears in the web application.

Scenario: Disaster recovery. Regional outage must not impact application availability. All DR operations must not be dependent on application running and must ensure that data in the DR region is up to date.

Box 1: DirectoryTransferContext

We transfer all files in the directory.

Note: The TransferContext object comes in two forms: SingleTransferContext and DirectoryTransferContext. The former is for transferring a single file and the latter is for transferring a directory of files.

Box 2: ShouldTransferCallbackAsync

The DirectoryTransferContext.ShouldTransferCallbackAsync delegate callback is invoked to tell whether a transfer should be done.

Box 3: False

If you want to use the retry policy in Copy, and want the copy can be resume if break in the middle, you can use SyncCopy (isServiceCopy = false).

Note that if you choose to use service side copy ('isServiceCopy' set to true), Azure (currently) doesn't provide SLA for that. Setting 'isServiceCopy' to false will download the source blob loca

Box 1: var key = await Resolver.ResolveKeyAsyn(keyBundle,KeyIdentifier.CancellationToken.None);

Box 2: var x = new BlobEncryptionPolicy(key,resolver);

Example:

// We begin with cloudKey1, and a resolver capable of resolving and caching Key Vault secrets.

BlobEncryptionPolicy encryptionPolicy = new BlobEncryptionPolicy(cloudKey1, cachingResolver);

client.DefaultRequestOptions.EncryptionPolicy = encryptionPolicy;

Box 3: cloudblobClient. DefaultRequestOptions.EncryptionPolicy = x;

Scenario, the log capacity issue: Developers report that the number of log message in the trace output for the processor is too high, resulting in lost log messages.

Sampling is a feature in Azure Application Insights. It is the recommended way to reduce telemetry traffic and storage, while preserving a statistically correct analysis of application data. The filter selects items that are related, so that you can navigate between items when you are doing diagnostic investigations. When metric counts are presented to you in the portal, they are renormalized to take account of the sampling, to minimize any effect on the statistics.

Sampling reduces traffic and data costs, and helps you avoid throttling.

Azure Event Hub is used for telemetry and distributed data streaming.

This service provides a single solution that enables rapid data retrieval for real-time processing as well as repeated replay of stored raw data. It can capture the streaming data into a file for processing and analysis.

It has the following characteristics:

• low latency
• capable of receiving and processing millions of events per second
• at least once delivery

Claims in access tokens

JWTs (JSON Web Tokens) are split into three pieces:

• Header - Provides information about how to validate the token including information about the type of token and how it was signed.
• Payload - Contains all of the important data about the user or app that is attempting to call your service.
• Signature - Is the raw material used to validate the token.

Your client can get an access token from either the v1.0 endpoint or the v2.0 endpoint using a variety of protocols.

Scenario: User authentication (see step 5 below)

The following steps detail the user authentication process:

• The user selects Sign in in the website.
• The browser redirects the user to the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) sign in page.
• The user signs in.
• Azure AD redirects the user’s session back to the web application. The URL includes an access token.
• The web application calls an API and includes the access token in the authentication header. The application ID is sent as the audience (‘aud’) claim in the access token.
• The back-end API validates the access token.

Scenario: The Shipping Logic App requires secure resources to the corporate VNet and use dedicated storage resources with a fixed costing model.

You can access to Azure Virtual Network resources from Azure Logic Apps by using integration service environments (ISEs).

Sometimes, your logic apps and integration accounts need access to secured resources, such as virtual machines (VMs) and other systems or services, that are inside an Azure virtual network. To set up this access, you can create an integration service environment (ISE) where you can run your logic apps and create your integration accounts.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/connect-virtual-network-v net-isolated-environment-overview

Scenario: Shipping Function app: Implement secure function endpoints by using app-level security and include Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

Box 1: Function

Box 2: JSON based Token (JWT)

Azure AD uses JSON based tokens (JWTs) that contain claims

Box 3: HTTP

How a web app delegates sign-in to Azure AD and obtains a token

User authentication happens via the browser. The OpenID protocol uses standard HTTP protocol messages.

References:

https://docs.m icrosoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/authentication-scenarios

Migrate from on-premises or cloud implementations of MongoDB to Azure Cosmos DB with minimal downtime by using Azure Database Migration Service. Perform resilient migrations of MongoDB data at scale and with high reliability.

Scenario: Data migration from on-premises to Azure must minimize costs and downtime.

The application uses MongoDB JSON document storage database for all container and transport information.

References:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en -us/updates/mongodb-to-azure-cosmos-db-online-and-offline-migrations-are-now-available/

Scenario: Shipping website

Use Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) and ensure maximum performance for dynamic content while minimizing latency and costs.

Tier: Standard

Profile: Akamai

Optimization: Dynamic site acceleration

Dynamic site acceleration (DSA) is available for Azure CDN Standard from Akamai, Azure CDN Standard from Verizon, and Azure CDN Premium from Verizon profiles.

DSA includes various techniques that benefit the latency and performance of dynamic content. Techniques include route and network optimization, TCP optimization, and more.

You can use this optimization to accelerate a web app that includes numerous responses that aren't cacheable. Examples are search results, checkout transactions, or real-time data. You can continue to use core Azure CDN caching capabilities for static data.

Box 1: AllowedOrigins

A CORS request will fail if Access-Control-Allow-Origin is missing.

Scenario:

The following error message displays while you are testing the website:

Box 2: http://test-shippingapi.wideworldimporters.com

Syntax: Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Access-Control-Allow-Origin:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: null

Specifies an origin. Only a single origin can be specified.

Box 3: AllowedOrigins

Box 4: POST

The only allowed methods are GET, HEAD, and POST. In this case POST is used.

"" "allowedmethods" Failed to load no "Access-control-Origin" header is present

References:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs /Web/HTTP/Headers/Access-Control-Allow-Origin

Enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) on your Azure App Service Web App.

Enter the full URL of the site you want to allow to access your WEB API or * to allow all domains.

Box 1: cors

Box 2: add

Box 3: allowed-origins

Box 4: http://testwideworldimporters.com/

References:

http://donovanbr own.com/post/How-to-clear-No-Access-Control-Allow-Origin-header-error-with-Azure-App-Service

Methods to Get User Identity and Claims in a .NET Azure Functions App include:

ClaimsPrincipal from the Request Context

The ClaimsPrincipal object is also available as part of the request context and can be extracted from the HttpRequest.HttpContext.

User Claims from the Request Headers.

App Service passes user claims to the app by using special request headers.

Backup and Restore: Azure Backup

Scenario: The VM is critical and has not been backed up in the past. The VM must enable a quick restore from a 7-day snapshot to include in-place restore of disks in case of failure.

In-Place restore of disks in IaaS VMs is a feature of Azure Backup.

Performance: Accelerated Networking

Scenario: The VM shows high network latency, jitter, and high CPU utilization.

Accelerated networking enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to a VM, greatly improving its networking performance. This high-performance path bypasses the host from the datapath, reducing latency, jitter, and CPU utilization, for use with the most demanding network workloads on supported VM types.

References:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/an-easy-way-to-bring-back-your-azure-vm-with-in-place-restore/

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Box 1: Strong

When the consistency level is set to strong, the staleness window is equivalent to zero, and the clients are guaranteed to read the latest committed value of the write operation.

Scenario: Changes to the Order data must reflect immediately across all partitions. All reads to the Order data must fetch the most recent writes.

Note: You can choose from five well-defined models on the consistency spectrum. From strongest to weakest, the models are: Strong, Bounded staleness, Session, Consistent prefix, Eventual

Box 2: SQL

Scenario: You identify the following requirements for data management and manipulation:

Order data is stored as nonrelational JSON and must be queried using Structured Query Language (SQL).

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Box 1: orders o

Scenario: Order data is stored as nonrelational JSON and must be queried using SQL.

Box 2:li

Box 3: o.line_items

Box 4: o.city

The city field is in Order, not in the 2s.

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Step 1: Build a new application image by using dockerfile

Step 2: Create an alias if the image with the fully qualified path to the registry

Before you can push the image to a private registry, you’ve to ensure a proper image name. This can be achieved using the docker tag command. For demonstration purpose, we’ll use Docker’s hello world image, rename it and push it to ACR.

# pulls hello-world from the public docker hub

$ docker pull hello-world

# tag the image in order to be able to push it to a private registry

$ docker tag hello-word /hello-world

# push the image

$ docker push /hello-world

Step 3: Log in to the registry and push image

In order to push images to the newly created ACR instance, you need to login to ACR form the Docker CLI. Once logged in, you can push any existing docker image to your ACR instance.

Scenario:

Coho Winery plans to move the application to Azure and continue to support label creation.

LabelMaker app

Azure Monitor Container Health must be used to monitor the performance of workloads that are deployed to Kubernetes environments and hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

You must use Azure Container Registry to publish images that support the AKS deployment.