12. Connecting an application to an Azure database
In previous chapters, you stored the state of your application in your cluster, either on a Redis cluster or on MariaDB. You might remember that both had some issues when it came to high availability. This chapter will take you through the process of connecting to a MySQL database managed by Azure.
We will discuss the benefits of using a hosted database rather than running StatefulSets on Kubernetes. To create this hosted and managed database, you will make use of Azure Service Operator (ASO). ASO is a way to create Azure resources, such as a managed MySQL database, from within a Kubernetes cluster. In this chapter, you will learn more details about the ASO project, and you will set up and configure ASO on your cluster.
You will then make use of ASO to create a MySQL database in Azure. You will use this managed database as part of a WordPress application. This will show you how you can connect an application...