Quickstart: Deploy an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster using the Azure CLI

• 12/18/2018
• 6 minutes to read
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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that lets you quickly deploy and manage clusters. In this quickstart, you deploy an AKS cluster using the Azure CLI. A multi-container application that includes a web front end and a Redis instance is run in the cluster. You then see how to monitor the health of the cluster and pods that run your application.

This quickstart assumes a basic understanding of Kubernetes concepts. For more information, see Kubernetes core concepts for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Open Azure Cloud Shell

Azure Cloud Shell is a free, interactive shell that you can use to run the steps in this article. Common Azure tools are preinstalled and configured in Cloud Shell for you to use with your account. Select Copy to copy the code, paste it in Cloud Shell, and then press Enter to run it. There are a few ways to open Cloud Shell:

Select Try It in the upper-right corner of a code block.
Open Cloud Shell in your browser.
Select the Cloud Shell button on the menu in the upper-right corner of the Azure portal.

If you choose to install and use the CLI locally, this quickstart requires that you are running the Azure CLI version 2.0.52 or later. Run az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Create a resource group

An Azure resource group is a logical group in which Azure resources are deployed and managed. When you create a resource group, you are asked to specify a location. This location is where resource group metadata is stored, it is also where your resources run in Azure if you don't specify another region during resource creation. Create a resource group using the az group create command.

The following example creates a resource group named myResourceGroup in the eastus location.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus

The following example output shows the resource group created successfully:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/<guid>/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup",
  "location": "eastus",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "myResourceGroup",
  "properties": {
    "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
  },
  "tags": null
}

Create AKS cluster

Use the az aks create command to create an AKS cluster. The following example creates a cluster named myAKSCluster with one node. Azure Monitor for containers is also enabled using the --enable-addons monitoring parameter.

az aks create \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name myAKSCluster \
    --node-count 1 \
    --enable-addons monitoring \
    --generate-ssh-keys

After a few minutes, the command completes and returns JSON-formatted information about the cluster.

Connect to the cluster

To manage a Kubernetes cluster, you use kubectl, the Kubernetes command-line client. If you use Azure Cloud Shell, kubectl is already installed. To install kubectl locally, use the az aks install-cli command:

az aks install-cli

To configure kubectl to connect to your Kubernetes cluster, use the az aks get-credentials command. This command downloads credentials and configures the Kubernetes CLI to use them.

az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster

To verify the connection to your cluster, use the kubectl get command to return a list of the cluster nodes.

kubectl get nodes

The following example output shows the single node created in the previous steps. Make sure that the status of the node is Ready:

NAME                       STATUS   ROLES   AGE     VERSION
aks-nodepool1-31718369-0   Ready    agent   6m44s   v1.9.11

Run the application

A Kubernetes manifest file defines a desired state for the cluster, such as what container images to run. In this quickstart, a manifest is used to create all objects needed to run the Azure Vote application. This manifest includes two Kubernetes deployments - one for the sample Azure Vote Python applications, and the other for a Redis instance. Two Kubernetes Services are also created - an internal service for the Redis instance, and an external service to access the Azure Vote application from the internet.

Create a file named azure-vote.yaml and copy in the following YAML definition. If you use the Azure Cloud Shell, this file can be created using vi or nano as if working on a virtual or physical system:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: azure-vote-back
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: azure-vote-back
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: azure-vote-back
    spec:
      nodeSelector:
        "beta.kubernetes.io/os": linux
      containers:
      - name: azure-vote-back
        image: redis
        resources:
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 128Mi
          limits:
            cpu: 250m
            memory: 256Mi
        ports:
        - containerPort: 6379
          name: redis
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: azure-vote-back
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 6379
  selector:
    app: azure-vote-back
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: azure-vote-front
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: azure-vote-front
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: azure-vote-front
    spec:
      nodeSelector:
        "beta.kubernetes.io/os": linux
      containers:
      - name: azure-vote-front
        image: microsoft/azure-vote-front:v1
        resources:
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 128Mi
          limits:
            cpu: 250m
            memory: 256Mi
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        env:
        - name: REDIS
          value: "azure-vote-back"
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: azure-vote-front
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  - port: 80
  selector:
    app: azure-vote-front

Deploy the application using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl apply -f azure-vote.yaml

The following example output shows the Deployments and Services created successfully:

deployment "azure-vote-back" created
service "azure-vote-back" created
deployment "azure-vote-front" created
service "azure-vote-front" created

Test the application

When the application runs, a Kubernetes service exposes the application front end to the internet. This process can take a few minutes to complete.

To monitor progress, use the kubectl get service command with the --watch argument.

kubectl get service azure-vote-front --watch

Initially the EXTERNAL-IP for the azure-vote-front service is shown as pending.

NAME               TYPE           CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
azure-vote-front   LoadBalancer   10.0.37.27   <pending>     80:30572/TCP   6s

When the EXTERNAL-IP address changes from pending to an actual public IP address, use CTRL-C to stop the kubectl watch process. The following example output shows a valid public IP address assigned to the service:

azure-vote-front   LoadBalancer   10.0.37.27   52.179.23.131   80:30572/TCP   2m

To see the Azure Vote app in action, open a web browser to the external IP address of your service.

Monitor health and logs

When the AKS cluster was created, Azure Monitor for containers was enabled to capture health metrics for both the cluster nodes and pods. These health metrics are available in the Azure portal.

To see current status, uptime, and resource usage for the Azure Vote pods, complete the following steps:

1. Open a web browser to the Azure portal https://portal.azure.com.
2. Select your resource group, such as myResourceGroup, then select your AKS cluster, such as myAKSCluster.
3. Under Monitoring on the left-hand side, choose Insights
4. Across the top, choose to + Add Filter
5. Select Namespace as the property, then choose <All but kube-system>
6. Choose to view the Containers.

The azure-vote-back and azure-vote-front containers are displayed, as shown in the following example:

To see logs for the azure-vote-front pod, select the View container logs link on the right-hand side of the containers list. These logs include the stdout and stderr streams from the container.

Delete cluster

When the cluster is no longer needed, use the az group delete command to remove the resource group, container service, and all related resources.

az group delete --name myResourceGroup --yes --no-wait

Get the code

In this quickstart, pre-created container images were used to create a Kubernetes deployment. The related application code, Dockerfile, and Kubernetes manifest file are available on GitHub.

https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-voting-app-redis

Next steps

In this quickstart, you deployed a Kubernetes cluster and deployed a multi-container application to it. Access the Kubernetes web dashboard for the cluster you just created.

To learn more about AKS, and walk through a complete code to deployment example, continue to the Kubernetes cluster tutorial.