How to deploy on AKS¶

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) allows you to quickly deploy a production ready Kubernetes cluster in Azure.

AKS web interface: https://portal.azure.com/

Prerequisites¶

A physical or virtual machine running Ubuntu 24.04+
Juju 3.6+ installed via snap

Install AKS CLI tooling¶

Install the Azure CLI for Linux by following the official Azure documentation .

Install the kubectl CLI tools via snap:

user@host:~$

sudo snap install kubectl --classic

To check they are correctly installed, run

user@host:~$

az --version

azure-cli                         2.65.0
core                              2.65.0
telemetry                          1.1.0

Dependencies:
msal                              1.31.0
azure-mgmt-resource               23.1.1
...

Your CLI is up-to-date.

user@host:~$

kubectl version --client

Client Version: v1.28.2
Kustomize Version: v5.0.4-0.20230601165947-6ce0bf390ce3

Authenticate¶

user@host:~$

az login

Create a new AKS cluster¶

Export the deployment name for later use:

user@host:~$

export JUJU_NAME=aks-$USER-$RANDOM

Create a new Azure Resource Group in the region that best suits you:

user@host:~$

az group create --name aks --location <region-name>

Create a new Kubernetes cluster on AKS with the following command (increase node count and size if necessary):

user@host:~$

az aks create -g aks -n ${JUJU_NAME} --enable-managed-identity --node-count 1 --node-vm-size=Standard_D4s_v4 --generate-ssh-keys

{
  "aadProfile": null,
  "addonProfiles": null,
  "agentPoolProfiles": [
    {
      "availabilityZones": null,
      "capacityReservationGroupId": null,
      "count": 1,
      "creationData": null,
      "currentOrchestratorVersion": "1.28.9",
      "enableAutoScaling": false,
      "enableEncryptionAtHost": false,
      "enableFips": false,
      "enableNodePublicIp": false,
...

Dump the new AKS credentials:

user@host:~$

az aks get-credentials --resource-group aks --name ${JUJU_NAME} --context aks

...
Merged "aks" as current context in ~/.kube/config

Bootstrap Juju on AKS¶

Bootstrap a Juju controller:

user@host:~$

juju bootstrap aks <controller-name>

Creating Juju controller "aks" on aks/<region-name>
Bootstrap to Kubernetes cluster identified as azure/<region-name>
Creating k8s resources for controller "controller-aks"
Downloading images
Starting controller pod
Bootstrap agent now started
Contacting Juju controller at 20.231.233.33 to verify accessibility...

Bootstrap complete, controller "aks" is now available in namespace "controller-aks"

Now you can run
	juju add-model <model-name>
to create a new model to deploy k8s workloads.

Deploy Charmed PostgreSQL on AKS¶

Create a Juju model:

user@host:~$

juju add-model <model-name>

The following command deploys 3 nodes of PostgreSQL on Kubernetes:

user@host:~$

juju deploy postgresql-k8s --channel 16/stable --trust -n 3

Deployed "postgresql-k8s" from charm-hub charm "postgresql-k8s", revision <number> in channel 16/stable on ubuntu@24.04/edge

Display deployment information¶

Display information about the current deployments with kubectl and az:

user@host:~$

kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes control plane is running at https://aks-user-aks-aaaaa-bbbbb.hcp.<region-name>.azmk8s.io:443
CoreDNS is running at https://aks-user-aks-aaaaa-bbbbb.hcp.<region-name>.azmk8s.io:443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
Metrics-server is running at https://aks-user-aks-aaaaa-bbbbb.hcp.<region-name>.azmk8s.io:443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:metrics-server:/proxy

user@host:~$

az aks list

...
        "count": 1,
        "currentOrchestratorVersion": "1.28.9",
        "enableAutoScaling": false,
...

user@host:~$

kubectl get node

NAME                                STATUS   ROLES   AGE   VERSION
aks-nodepool1-31246187-vmss000000   Ready    agent   11m   v1.28.9

Clean up¶

Always clean cloud resources that are no longer necessary; they could be costly!

See all controllers in your machine with

user@host:~$

juju controllers

Controller         Model         User   Access     Cloud/Region                Models  Nodes    HA  Version
<controller-name>  <model-name>  admin  superuser  <cloud-name>/<region-name>  1       1      none  3.6.1

The following command will destroy the Juju controller and remove the cloud instance - meaning all your data will be permanently removed:

user@host:~$

juju destroy-controller <controller-name> --destroy-all-models --destroy-storage --force

List all services and then delete those that have an associated EXTERNAL-IP value (e.g. load balancers):

user@host:~$

kubectl get svc --all-namespaces

(...)

user@host:~$

kubectl delete svc <service-name>

Next, delete the AKS resources:

user@host:~$

az aks delete -g aks -n ${JUJU_NAME}

Finally, log out from AKS to clean the local credentials (to avoid forgetting and leaking):

user@host:~$

az logout