Module 1: Creating an AKS cluster

In this section, we’ll be using the Azure Portal to create an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, configure kubectl access to it, and deploy a sample application.

Adapted from the official Azure AKS documentation.

CLI version of these docs is also available from a previous lab.

Prerequisites

• You have signed into the Azure Portal
• You have the access permissions required to create and manage K8s clusters in your organization
• You have set up cost data
• You have installed Azure CLI
• You have installed kubectl

Step 1: Configure and deploy the cluster

1. In the Azure Portal, search for Kubernetes services -> Create -> Create a Kubernetes cluster

2. Configure cluster details.

   ### Basics

   • Project details:
     • Select an Azure Subscription.
     • Select or create an Azure Resource group, such as myResourceGroup.
   • Cluster details:
     • Choose the Standard ($$) preset configuration.
     • Enter a Kubernetes cluster name, such as kubecost-demo-cluster.
     • Select a Region.
     • Select a Kubernetes version for the AKS cluster. At the time of writing this document, the version used is 1.21.7 (default).
   • Primary node pool:
     • Leave the default values selected.

   ### Networking

   • Select Kubenet, and leave the DNS name prefix unchanged.
   • (optional) Enable HTTP application routing. This step is required if you intend to expose the Kubecost UI dashboard via a Load Balancer.
3. Go to Review + create tab and click Create

Here is what the configuration should look like.

Step 2: Configure kubectl access to the cluster

We will be accessing the cluster using the Azure CLI az aks command and kubectl.

1. Open the terminal and login to Azure with the same credentials you used to create the AKS cluster.

    $ az login
   

   This will open your browser and take you to the sign in page to confirm your identity.

2. Sign in with your account credentials in the browser.

3. Configure kubectl to connect to your Kubernetes cluster using the az aks get-credentials command. The following command downloads credentials and configures the current kubectl context to use them.

    $ az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name kubecost-demo-cluster
   

4. Verify the connection to your cluster using kubectl get to return a list of the cluster nodes.

    $ kubectl get nodes
   

   The output shows the single node created in the previous step.

NAME                                STATUS   ROLES   AGE    VERSION
aks-agentpool-28582544-vmss000000   Ready    agent   15m   v1.21.7
aks-agentpool-28582544-vmss000002   Ready    agent   15m   v1.21.7

Step 3: Deploy a sample application

This step is optional. For the sake of this demo, we’ll deploy a small nginx server so that we can explore more cost data using Kubecost in the next section of this lab.

1. Create a namespace

    $ kubectl create namespace nginx-app
   

2. Deploy the application

    $ kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/application/deployment.yaml -n nginx-app
   

3. Verify the deployment

    $ kubectl get deployments -n nginx-app
   

The output should look like this. Make sure the deployment is in READY state.

NAME               READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
nginx-deployment   2/2     2            2           10s