Managed Clusters (AKS)

• Feature status: Experimental
• Feature gate: AKS=true,MachinePool=true

Cluster API Provider Azure (CAPZ) experimentally supports managing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters. CAPZ implements this with three custom resources:

• AzureManagedControlPlane
• AzureManagedCluster
• AzureManagedMachinePool

The combination of AzureManagedControlPlane/AzureManagedCluster corresponds to provisioning an AKS cluster. AzureManagedMachinePool corresponds one-to-one with AKS node pools. This also means that creating an AzureManagedControlPlane requires at least one AzureManagedMachinePool with spec.mode System, since AKS expects at least one system pool at creation time. For more documentation on system node pool refer AKS Docs

Deploy with clusterctl

A clusterctl flavor exists to deploy an AKS cluster with CAPZ. This flavor requires the following environment variables to be set before executing clusterctl.

# Kubernetes values
export CLUSTER_NAME="my-cluster"
export WORKER_MACHINE_COUNT=2
export KUBERNETES_VERSION="v1.24.6"

# Azure values
export AZURE_LOCATION="southcentralus"
export AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP="${CLUSTER_NAME}"
# set AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID to the GUID of your subscription
# this example uses an sdk authentication file and parses the subscriptionId with jq
# this file may be created using

Create a new service principal and save to a local file:

az ad sp create-for-rbac --role Contributor --scopes="/subscriptions/${AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}" --sdk-auth > sp.json

export the following variables in your current shell.

export AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="$(cat sp.json | jq -r .subscriptionId | tr -d '\n')"
export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="$(cat sp.json | jq -r .clientSecret | tr -d '\n')"
export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="$(cat sp.json | jq -r .clientId | tr -d '\n')"
export AZURE_NODE_MACHINE_TYPE="Standard_D2s_v3"
export AZURE_CLUSTER_IDENTITY_SECRET_NAME="cluster-identity-secret"
export AZURE_CLUSTER_IDENTITY_SECRET_NAMESPACE="default"
export CLUSTER_IDENTITY_NAME="cluster-identity"

Managed clusters also require the following feature flags set as environment variables:

export EXP_MACHINE_POOL=true
export EXP_AKS=true

Create a local kind cluster to run the management cluster components:

kind create cluster

Create an identity secret on the management cluster:

kubectl create secret generic "${AZURE_CLUSTER_IDENTITY_SECRET_NAME}" --from-literal=clientSecret="${AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET}"

Execute clusterctl to template the resources, then apply to your kind management cluster:

clusterctl init --infrastructure azure
clusterctl generate cluster ${CLUSTER_NAME} --kubernetes-version ${KUBERNETES_VERSION} --flavor aks > cluster.yaml

# assumes an existing management cluster
kubectl apply -f cluster.yaml

# check status of created resources
kubectl get cluster-api -o wide

Specification

We’ll walk through an example to view available options.

apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
    services:
      cidrBlocks:
      - 192.168.0.0/16
  controlPlaneRef:
    apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
    name: my-cluster-control-plane
  infrastructureRef:
    apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: AzureManagedCluster
    name: my-cluster
---
apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-control-plane
spec:
  location: southcentralus
  resourceGroupName: foo-bar
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 # fake uuid
  version: v1.21.2
  networkPolicy: azure # or calico
  networkPlugin: azure # or kubenet
  sku:
    tier: Free # or Paid
---
apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedCluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
---
apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: MachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  clusterName: my-cluster
  replicas: 2
  template:
    spec:
      clusterName: my-cluster
      infrastructureRef:
        apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
        kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
        name: agentpool0
        namespace: default
      version: v1.21.2
---
apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 30
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
---
apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: MachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool1
spec:
  clusterName: my-cluster
  replicas: 2
  template:
    spec:
      clusterName: my-cluster
      infrastructureRef:
        apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
        kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
        name: agentpool1
        namespace: default
      version: v1.21.2
---
apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool1
spec:
  mode: User
  osDiskSizeGB: 40
  sku: Standard_D2s_v4

The main features for configuration today are networkPolicy and networkPlugin. Other configuration values like subscriptionId and node machine type should be fairly clear from context.

Use an existing Virtual Network to provision an AKS cluster

If you’d like to deploy your AKS cluster in an existing Virtual Network, but create the cluster itself in a different resource group, you can configure the AzureManagedControlPlane resource with a reference to the existing Virtual Network and subnet. For example:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-control-plane
spec:
  location: southcentralus
  resourceGroupName: foo-bar
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 # fake uuid
  version: v1.21.2
  virtualNetwork:
    cidrBlock: 10.0.0.0/8
    name: test-vnet
    resourceGroup: test-rg
    subnet:
      cidrBlock: 10.0.2.0/24
      name: test-subnet

Multitenancy

Multitenancy for managed clusters can be configured by using aks-multi-tenancy flavor. The steps for creating an azure managed identity and mapping it to an AzureClusterIdentity are similar to the ones described here. The AzureClusterIdentity object is then mapped to a managed cluster through the identityRef field in AzureManagedControlPlane.spec. Following is an example configuration:

apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
  namespace: default
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
    services:
      cidrBlocks:
      - 192.168.0.0/16
  controlPlaneRef:
    apiVersion: exp.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
    name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
  infrastructureRef:
    apiVersion: exp.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: AzureManagedCluster
    name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
---
apiVersion: exp.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
  namespace: default
spec:
  identityRef:
    apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: AzureClusterIdentity
    name: ${CLUSTER_IDENTITY_NAME}
    namespace: ${CLUSTER_IDENTITY_NAMESPACE}
  location: ${AZURE_LOCATION}
  resourceGroupName: ${AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP:=${CLUSTER_NAME}}
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: ${AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}
  version: ${KUBERNETES_VERSION}
---

AKS Managed Azure Active Directory Integration

Azure Kubernetes Service can be configured to use Azure Active Directory for user authentication. AAD for managed clusters can be configured by enabling the managed spec in AzureManagedControlPlane to true and by providing Azure AD GroupObjectId in AdminGroupObjectIDs array. The group is needed as admin group for the cluster to grant cluster admin permissions. You can use an existing Azure AD group, or create a new one. For more documentation about AAD refer AKS AAD Docs

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-control-plane
spec:
  location: southcentralus
  resourceGroupName: foo-bar
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: fae7cc14-bfba-4471-9435-f945b42a16dd # fake uuid
  version: v1.21.2
  aadProfile:
    managed: true
    adminGroupObjectIDs:
    - 917056a9-8eb5-439c-g679-b34901ade75h # fake admin groupId

AKS Cluster Autoscaler

Azure Kubernetes Service can be configured to use cluster autoscaler by specifying scaling spec in the AzureManagedMachinePool

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 30
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  scaling:
    minSize: 2
    maxSize: 10

AKS Node Labels to an Agent Pool

You can configure the NodeLabels value for each AKS node pool (AzureManagedMachinePool) that you define in your spec.

Below an example nodeLabels configuration is assigned to agentpool0, specifying that each node in the pool will add a label dedicated : kafka

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 512
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  nodeLabels:
    dedicated: kafka

AKS Node Pool MaxPods configuration

You can configure the MaxPods value for each AKS node pool (AzureManagedMachinePool) that you define in your spec (see here for the official AKS documentation). This corresponds to the kubelet --max-pods configuration (official kubelet configuration documentation can be found here).

Below an example maxPods configuration is assigned to agentpool0, specifying that each node in the pool will enforce a maximum of 24 scheduled pods:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 30
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  maxPods: 32

AKS Node Pool OsDiskType configuration

You can configure the OsDiskType value for each AKS node pool (AzureManagedMachinePool) that you define in your spec (see here for the official AKS documentation). There are two options to choose from: "Managed" (the default) or "Ephemeral".

Below an example osDiskType configuration is assigned to agentpool0, specifying that each node in the pool will use a local, ephemeral OS disk for faster disk I/O at the expense of possible data loss:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 30
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  osDiskType: "Ephemeral"

AKS Node Pool Taints

You can configure the Taints value for each AKS node pool (AzureManagedMachinePool) that you define in your spec.

Below is an example of taints configuration for the agentpool0:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: System
  osDiskSizeGB: 512
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  taints:
    - effect: no-schedule
      key: dedicated
      value: kafka

AKS Node Pool OS Type

If your cluster uses the Azure network plugin (AzureManagedControlPlane.networkPlugin) you can set the operating system for your User nodepools. The osType field is immutable and only can be set at creation time, it defaults to Linux and can be either Linux or Windows.

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  name: agentpool0
spec:
  mode: User
  osDiskSizeGB: 30
  sku: Standard_D2s_v3
  osDiskType: "Ephemeral"
  osType: Windows

Enable AKS features with custom headers (--aks-custom-headers)

To enable some AKS cluster / node pool features you need to pass special headers to the cluster / node pool create request. For example, to add a node pool for GPU nodes, you need to pass a custom header UseGPUDedicatedVHD=true (with --aks-custom-headers UseGPUDedicatedVHD=true argument). To do this with CAPZ, you need to add special annotations to AzureManagedCluster (for cluster features) or AzureManagedMachinePool (for node pool features). These annotations should have a prefix infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/custom-header- followed by the name of the AKS feature. For example, to create a node pool with GPU support, you would add the following annotation to AzureManagedMachinePool:

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
metadata:
  ...
  annotations:
    "infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/custom-header-UseGPUDedicatedVHD": "true"
  ...
spec:
  ...

Use a public Standard Load Balancer

A public Load Balancer when integrated with AKS serves two purposes:

• To provide outbound connections to the cluster nodes inside the AKS virtual network. It achieves this objective by translating the nodes private IP address to a public IP address that is part of its Outbound Pool.
• To provide access to applications via Kubernetes services of type LoadBalancer. With it, you can easily scale your applications and create highly available services.

For more documentation about public Standard Load Balancer refer AKS Doc and AKS REST API Doc

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-control-plane
spec:
  location: southcentralus
  resourceGroupName: foo-bar
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 # fake uuid
  version: v1.21.2
  loadBalancerProfile: # Load balancer profile must specify at most one of ManagedOutboundIPs, OutboundIPPrefixes and OutboundIPs
    managedOutboundIPs: 2 # 1-100
    outboundIPPrefixes:
    - /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/foo-bar/providers/Microsoft.Network/publicIPPrefixes/my-public-ip-prefix # fake public ip prefix
    outboundIPs:
    - /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/foo-bar/providers/Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/my-public-ip # fake public ip
    allocatedOutboundPorts: 100 # 0-64000
    idleTimeoutInMinutes: 10 # 4-120

Secure access to the API server using authorized IP address ranges

In Kubernetes, the API server receives requests to perform actions in the cluster such as to create resources or scale the number of nodes. The API server is the central way to interact with and manage a cluster. To improve cluster security and minimize attacks, the API server should only be accessible from a limited set of IP address ranges.

For more documentation about authorized IP address ranges refer AKS Doc and AKS REST API Doc

apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
kind: AzureManagedControlPlane
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-control-plane
spec:
  location: southcentralus
  resourceGroupName: foo-bar
  sshPublicKey: ${AZURE_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY_B64:=""}
  subscriptionID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 # fake uuid
  version: v1.21.2
  apiServerAccessProfile:
    authorizedIPRanges:
    - 12.34.56.78/32
    enablePrivateCluster: false
    privateDNSZone: None # System, None. Allowed only when enablePrivateCluster is true
    enablePrivateClusterPublicFQDN: false # Allowed only when enablePrivateCluster is true

Immutable fields for Managed Clusters (AKS)

Some fields from the family of Managed Clusters CRD are immutable. Which means those can only be set during the creation time.

Following is the list of immutable fields for managed clusters:

Features

AKS clusters deployed from CAPZ currently only support a limited, “blessed” configuration. This was primarily to keep the initial implementation simple. If you’d like to run managed AKS cluster with CAPZ and need an additional feature, please open a pull request or issue with details. We’re happy to help!

Current limitations

• DNS IP is hardcoded to the x.x.x.10 inside the service CIDR.
  • primarily due to lack of validation, see #612
• Only supports system managed identities.
  • We would like to support user managed identities where appropriate.
• Only supports Standard load balancer (SLB).
  • We will not support Basic load balancer in CAPZ. SLB is generally the path forward in Azure.
• Only supports Azure Active Directory Managed by Azure.
  • We will not support Legacy Azure Active Directory

Troubleshooting

If a user tries to delete the MachinePool which refers to the last system node pool AzureManagedMachinePool webhook will reject deletion, so time stamp never gets set on the AzureManagedMachinePool. However the timestamp would be set on the MachinePool and would be in deletion state. To recover from this state create a new MachinePool manually referencing the AzureManagedMachinePool, edit the required references and finalizers to link the MachinePool to the AzureManagedMachinePool. In the AzureManagedMachinePool remove the owner reference to the old MachinePool, and set it to the new MachinePool. Once the new MachinePool is pointing to the AzureManagedMachinePool you can delete the old MachinePool. To delete the old MachinePool remove the finalizers in that object.

Here is an Example:

# MachinePool deleted
apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: MachinePool
metadata:
  finalizers:             # remove finalizers once new object is pointing to the AzureManagedMachinePool
  - machinepool.cluster.x-k8s.io
  labels:
    cluster.x-k8s.io/cluster-name: capz-managed-aks
  name: agentpool0
  namespace: default
  ownerReferences:
  - apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: Cluster
    name: capz-managed-aks
    uid: 152ecf45-0a02-4635-987c-1ebb89055fa2
  uid: ae4a235a-f0fa-4252-928a-0e3b4c61dbea
spec:
  clusterName: capz-managed-aks
  minReadySeconds: 0
  providerIDList:
  - azure:///subscriptions/9107f2fb-e486-a434-a948-52e2929b6f18/resourceGroups/MC_rg_capz-managed-aks_eastus/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/aks-agentpool0-10226072-vmss/virtualMachines/0
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata: {}
    spec:
      bootstrap:
        dataSecretName: ""
      clusterName: capz-managed-aks
      infrastructureRef:
        apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
        kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
        name: agentpool0
        namespace: default
      version: v1.21.2

---
# New Machinepool
apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: MachinePool
metadata:
  finalizers:
  - machinepool.cluster.x-k8s.io
  generation: 2
  labels:
    cluster.x-k8s.io/cluster-name: capz-managed-aks
  name: agentpool2    # change the name of the machinepool
  namespace: default
  ownerReferences:
  - apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: Cluster
    name: capz-managed-aks
    uid: 152ecf45-0a02-4635-987c-1ebb89055fa2
  # uid: ae4a235a-f0fa-4252-928a-0e3b4c61dbea     # remove the uid set for machinepool
spec:
  clusterName: capz-managed-aks
  minReadySeconds: 0
  providerIDList:
  - azure:///subscriptions/9107f2fb-e486-a434-a948-52e2929b6f18/resourceGroups/MC_rg_capz-managed-aks_eastus/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/aks-agentpool0-10226072-vmss/virtualMachines/0
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata: {}
    spec:
      bootstrap:
        dataSecretName: ""
      clusterName: capz-managed-aks
      infrastructureRef:
        apiVersion: infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
        kind: AzureManagedMachinePool
        name: agentpool0
        namespace: default
      version: v1.21.2