Lab 1: Create AKS Cluster

In this lab we will create our Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) distributed compute cluster.

Prerequisites

Azure Account

Instructions

Login to Azure Portal at http://portal.azure.com.
Open the Azure Cloud Shell and choose Bash Shell (do not choose Powershell)
The first time Cloud Shell is started will require you to create a storage account.
Once your cloud shell is started, clone the workshop repo into the cloud shell environment
```
git clone https://github.com/Azure/kubernetes-hackfest
```
Note: In the cloud shell, you are automatically logged into your Azure subscription.

Ensure you are using the correct Azure subscription you want to deploy AKS to.

# View subscriptions
az account list

# Verify selected subscription
az account show

# Set correct subscription (if needed)
az account set --subscription <subscription_id>

# Verify correct subscription is now set
az account show

Create a unique identifier suffix for resources to be created in this lab.

NOTE: In the following sections we’ll be generating and setting some environment variables. If you’re terminal session restarts you may need to reset these variables. You can use that via the following command:

source ~/workshopvars.env

echo "# Start AKS Hackfest Lab Params">>~/workshopvars.env
UNIQUE_SUFFIX=$USER$RANDOM
# Remove Underscores and Dashes (Not Allowed in AKS and ACR Names)
UNIQUE_SUFFIX="${UNIQUE_SUFFIX//_}"
UNIQUE_SUFFIX="${UNIQUE_SUFFIX//-}"
# Check Unique Suffix Value (Should be No Underscores or Dashes)
echo $UNIQUE_SUFFIX
# Persist for Later Sessions in Case of Timeout
echo export UNIQUE_SUFFIX=$UNIQUE_SUFFIX >> ~/workshopvars.env

Create an Azure Resource Group in East US.

# Set Resource Group Name using the unique suffix
RGNAME=aks-rg-$UNIQUE_SUFFIX
# Persist for Later Sessions in Case of Timeout
echo export RGNAME=$RGNAME >> ~/workshopvars.env
# Set Region (Location)
LOCATION=eastus
# Persist for Later Sessions in Case of Timeout
echo export LOCATION=eastus >> ~/workshopvars.env
# Create Resource Group
az group create -n $RGNAME -l $LOCATION

Create your AKS cluster in the resource group created above with 3 nodes. We will check for a recent version of kubnernetes before proceeding. We are also including the monitoring add-on for Azure Container Insights. You will use the Service Principal information from step 5.

Use Unique CLUSTERNAME

# Set AKS Cluster Name
CLUSTERNAME=aks${UNIQUE_SUFFIX}
# Look at AKS Cluster Name for Future Reference
echo $CLUSTERNAME
# Persist for Later Sessions in Case of Timeout
echo export CLUSTERNAME=aks${UNIQUE_SUFFIX} >> ~/workshopvars.env

Get available kubernetes versions for the region. You will likely see more recent versions in your lab.

az aks get-versions -l $LOCATION --output table

KubernetesVersion    Upgrades
-------------------  ----------------------
1.23.5               None available
1.23.3               1.23.5
1.22.6               1.23.3, 1.23.5
1.22.4               1.22.6, 1.23.3, 1.23.5
1.21.9               1.22.4, 1.22.6
1.21.7               1.21.9, 1.22.4, 1.22.6

For this lab we’ll use 1.23.5

K8SVERSION=1.23.5

The below command can take 3-5 minutes to run as it is creating the AKS cluster.

# Create AKS Cluster
az aks create -n $CLUSTERNAME -g $RGNAME \
--kubernetes-version $K8SVERSION \
--enable-managed-identity \
--generate-ssh-keys -l $LOCATION \
--node-count 3 \
--no-wait

Verify your cluster status. The ProvisioningState should be Succeeded

   az aks list -o table
   # Or
   watch az aks list -o table

      Name            Location    ResourceGroup      KubernetesVersion    ProvisioningState    Fqdn
      --------------  ----------  -----------------  -------------------  -------------------  ----------------------------------------------------------------
      aks25415        eastus      aks-rg-25415       1.23.5               Succeeded            aks25415-aks-rg-25415-62afe9-3a0152d0.hcp.eastus.azmk8s.io

Get the Kubernetes config files for your new AKS cluster

     az aks get-credentials -n $CLUSTERNAME -g $RGNAME

Verify you have API access to your new AKS cluster

   kubectl get nodes

   NAME                                STATUS   ROLES   AGE     VERSION
   aks-nodepool1-25335207-vmss000000   Ready    agent   2m1s    v1.23.5
   aks-nodepool1-25335207-vmss000001   Ready    agent   2m5s    v1.23.5
   aks-nodepool1-25335207-vmss000002   Ready    agent   2m13s   v1.23.5

To see more details about your cluster:

    kubectl cluster-info
   
   Kubernetes control plane is running at https://akssteve10-aks-rg-steve1075-62afe9-631a3ab4.hcp.eastus.azmk8s.io:443
   CoreDNS is running at https://akssteve10-aks-rg-steve1075-62afe9-631a3ab4.hcp.eastus.azmk8s.io:443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
   Metrics-server is running at https://akssteve10-aks-rg-steve1075-62afe9-631a3ab4.hcp.eastus.azmk8s.io:443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:metrics-server:/proxy

   To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.

You should now have a Kubernetes cluster running with 3 nodes. You do not see the master servers for the cluster because these are managed by Microsoft. The Control Plane services which manage the Kubernetes cluster such as scheduling, API access, configuration data store and object controllers are all provided as services to the nodes.

Namespaces Setup

This lab creates namespaces that reflect a representative example of an organization’s environments. In this case dev, uat and prod. We will also apply the appopriate permissions, limits and resource quotas to each of the namespaces.

Navigate to the directory of the cloned repository
```
cd kubernetes-hackfest
```

Create three namespaces

# Create namespaces
kubectl apply -f labs/create-aks-cluster/create-namespaces.yaml

# Look at namespaces
kubectl get ns

Assign CPU, memory and storage limits to namespaces

# Create namespace limits
kubectl apply -f labs/create-aks-cluster/namespace-limitranges.yaml

# Get list of namespaces and describe each
kubectl get ns
kubectl describe ns dev uat prod

Assign CPU, Memory and Storage Quotas to Namespaces

# Create namespace quotas
kubectl apply -f labs/create-aks-cluster/namespace-quotas.yaml

# Get list of namespaces and describe each
kubectl get ns
kubectl describe ns dev uat prod

Test out Limits and Quotas in dev Namespace

# Test Limits - Forbidden due to assignment of CPU too low
cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
   name: nginx-limittest
   namespace: dev
   labels:
      run: nginx-limittest
spec:
   containers:
   - image: nginx
     name: nginx-limittest
     ports:
     - containerPort: 80
     resources:
       requests:
         memory: "256Mi"
         cpu: "100m"
EOF

# Test Limits - Pass due to automatic assignment within limits via defaults
kubectl run nginx-limittest --image=nginx --restart=Never --port=80 -n dev

# Check running pod and dev Namespace Allocations
kubectl get po -n dev
kubectl describe ns dev

# Test Quotas - Forbidden due to memory quota exceeded
cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
   name: nginx-quotatest
   namespace: dev
   labels:
      run: nginx-quotatest
spec:
   containers:
   - image: nginx
     name: nginx-quotatest
     ports:
     - containerPort: 80
     resources:
       requests:
         memory: "1Gi"
         cpu: "500m"
EOF

# Test Quotas - Pass due to memory within quota
cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
   name: nginx-quotatest
   namespace: dev
   labels:
      run: nginx-quotatest
spec:
   containers:
   - image: nginx
     name: nginx-quotatest
     ports:
     - containerPort: 80
     resources:
       requests:
         memory: "512Mi"
         cpu: "500m"
EOF

# Check running pod and dev Namespace Allocations
kubectl get po -n dev
kubectl describe ns dev

Clean up limits, quotas, pods

kubectl delete ns dev
kubectl delete ns uat
kubectl delete ns prod

Create namespace for our application. This will be used in subsequent labs.
```
kubectl create ns hackfest
```

Troubleshooting / Debugging

The limits and quotas of a namespace can be found via the kubectl describe ns <…> command. You will also be able to see current allocations.
If pods are not deploying then check to make sure that CPU, Memory and Storage amounts are within the limits and do not exceed the overall quota of the namespace.

kubernetes-hackfest

Lab 1: Create AKS Cluster

Prerequisites

Instructions

Namespaces Setup

Troubleshooting / Debugging

Docs / References

Next Lab: Build Application Components and Prerequisites