Introduction

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes on Azure. This quickstart guides you through deploying a sample web application to an AKS cluster.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

Steps

  1. Create an AKS Cluster

    Use the Azure CLI to create a managed Kubernetes cluster. This command creates a new resource group and an AKS cluster within it. The deployment may take a few minutes.

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

    This command creates a cluster with one node. You can adjust the node count as needed.

  2. Connect to the Cluster

    Configure kubectl to connect to your AKS cluster. This command downloads credentials and sets the context for kubectl.

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

    Verify the connection by listing the nodes in your cluster:

    kubectl get nodes

  3. Deploy a Sample Application

    For this quickstart, we'll deploy a simple Azure Boards sample application. The application manifest is stored in a remote YAML file.

    kubectl create deployment azure-vote-back --image=mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/azure-vote-back
kubectl create service clusterip azure-vote-back --tcp 80:80

    Next, deploy the front-end application:

    kubectl create deployment azure-vote-front --image=mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/azure-vote-front --uses=azure-vote-back --port 80
kubectl create service loadbalancer azure-vote-front --publish 80:80 --uses azure-vote-front

  4. Test the Application

    Get the external IP address of the load balancer service:

    kubectl get service azure-vote-front

    Look for the EXTERNAL-IP address and open it in your web browser.

    Tip: It might take a minute or two for the external IP address to be assigned. If the IP address is still pending, run the command again in a few moments.

  5. Clean up Resources

    To avoid ongoing charges, delete the resource group and all its contained resources.

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

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed an application to Azure Kubernetes Service. You can now explore more advanced topics:

Explore More AKS Tutorials