Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that lets you quickly deploy and manage clusters. In this lab, you will:

Deploy an AKS cluster using the Azure CLI.
Run a sample multi-container application with a web front-end and a Redis instance in the cluster.

Firstly, I created a Resource Group that will house the AKS Cluster. A Resource Group on Azure is the logical folder that holds your resources in one place for ease of management.

The commands to create the resource are: az group create --name myResourceGroup --location

Secondly, I created Azure AKS cluster using: az aks create -g rg1 -n imohcluster --enable-managed-identity --node-count 1 --enable-addons monitoring --enable-msi-auth-for-monitoring --generate-ssh-keys

In the az aks create command above, I added --enable-addons monitoring and --enable-msi-auth-for-monitoring parameter to enable Azure Monitor Container insights with managed identity authentication (preview).

Thirdly, Install the kubectl command on my local PC by running az aks install-cli command. Installing the kubectl cli enables connection to the AKS Cluster on Azure.

In the fourth step, I added the kubectl to my local system path so when I run kubectl.exe the system will recognize it. You can do that by following the prompt on the screen while installing the kubectl cli in step 3 above. Usually, the path to add will look similar to this C:\Users\username.azure-kubectl and then, run $env:path += 'C:\Users\imoh_.azure-kubelogin' in the PowerShell or Git Bash Terminal.

In the fifth step, I configured kubectl to connect to your Kubernetes cluster using the az aks get-credentials command as shown below: az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster.

If you run the kubectl config get-contexts command, you will be able to see the node in which your cluster is running on. Also, you can run kubectl get nodes to returns a list of the cluster nodes.

Now using the vim editor, I created the yaml file called azure-vote.yaml and added the Yaml File content as defined in the Microsoft Official docs. See the Microsoft Official Docs

Here, after defining the Yaml file run the kubectl apply -f azure-vote.yaml to deploy the application. Note: This can take a little while to deploy depending on your internet speed. If it's throws connection timed out error keep trying it. Your output should look like the screenshot below:

Run kubectl get pods to see the list of running pods in your cluster.

To see the Azure Vote app in action, copy the external IP Address and run on your browser.

The UI of the app should look exactly as shown below:

To avoid Azure charges, if you don't plan on keeping the Voting App, clean up your unnecessary resources. Use the az group delete command as shown below to remove the resource group, container service, and all related resources.

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