Azure Container Registry - Highlights

Azure Container Registry is a managed Docker registry service based on the open-source Docker Registry 2.0. 

Azure Container Registry is a registry of Docker and Open Container Initiative (OCI) images as well as related content formats, such as Helm charts, OCI artifacts, and images built to the OCI image format specification.

Container Registry is private and hosted in Azure. 

Like Docker Hub, Container Registry is organized around repositories that contain one or more images. 

Container Registry lets you automate tasks such as redeploying an app when an image is rebuilt.

All images stored in a container registry are encrypted at rest.

Container Registry is highly scalable, providing enhanced throughput for Docker pulls that can span many nodes concurrently. The Premium SKU of Container Registry includes 500 GiB of storage.

In addition to storing and hosting images, you can also use Container Registry to build images. 

Instead of building an image yourself and pushing it to Container Registry, use the CLI to upload the Docker file and other files that make up your image. Container Registry will then build the image for you. Use the acr build command to run a build

When you create a web app from a Docker image, you configure the following properties:

• The registry that contains the image. The registry can be Docker Hub, Azure Container Registry, or some other private registry.
• The image. This item is the name of the repository.
• The tag. This item indicates which version of the image to use from the repository. By convention, the most recent version is given the tag latest when it's built.
• Startup File. This item is the name of an executable file or a command to be run when the image is loaded. 

Use the Tasks feature of Container Registry to rebuild your image whenever its source code changes automatically.

A webhook is a service offered by Azure Container Registry. Services and applications can subscribe to the webhook to receive notifications about updates to images in the registry to enable continuous integration. 

You can use Azure Container Registry to hold Docker images, and construct web apps based on these images. By using a webhook, you can configure continuous deployment for a web app. This process monitors the image for the web app in Container Registry and causes the web app to be redeployed automatically if the image changes.

ACR Tasks is a suite of features within Azure Container Registry. It provides automated cloud-based container image building for platforms including Linux, Windows, and ARM, and can automate OS and framework patching for your Docker containers.

If you want to build and push an image directly from source code, without a Dockerfile, Azure Container Registry provides the az acr pack build command. This tool builds and pushes an image from application source code using Cloud Native Buildpacks.