Microsoft Azure

Azure can run the container on its own with Container Instances, or on a Kubernetes cluster with AKS. Both pull the image from a registry such as Azure Container Registry.

Every platform needs the same settings from your server: listen on all interfaces (HOST=0.0.0.0), use the port the platform expects (PORT), run over HTTP (MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http), and point the health check at /mcp/health. Docker explains each one.

Container Instances

Create a resource group, then start one container with your settings. --secure-environment-variables keeps the secret out of the portal and logs.

# Create resource group
az group create --name mcp-rg --location eastus

# Create container
az container create \
  --resource-group mcp-rg \
  --name my-mcp-server \
  --image <registry>/my-mcp-server:latest \
  --ports 3000 \
  --environment-variables HOST=0.0.0.0 MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http PORT=3000 \
  --secure-environment-variables JWT_SECRET=$JWT_SECRET

AKS

Create a cluster, fetch its credentials, and apply the same manifest as the GKE example, with your registry's image.

# Create AKS cluster
az aks create --resource-group mcp-rg --name mcp-aks --node-count 2

# Get credentials
az aks get-credentials --resource-group mcp-rg --name mcp-aks

# Deploy (reuse the manifest from the GKE section, with your registry image)
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

Next steps