Azure Kubernetes with Terraform

Posted on by ccastro

When we talk about kubernetes running natively in the cloud, usually we don’t need to create virtual machines and install the kubernetes, we can if we want it, but there is a product called AKS ( Azure Kubernetes Service ) that we can use without take care of the admin nodes, only the worker nodes everything else is handled by Azure.

There are few ways to setup a new AKS cluster, either via Azure CLI or Azure Portal or Terraform. Today we gonna use Terraform to setup a completely fresh AKS cluster.

Pre requirements to get started with AKS using Terraform.

git clone https://github.com/carlospcastro/devops.git 
cd devops/cloud/Azure/terraform/test01/

Azure login

# To login to Azure
az login 

# To find your subscription
az account list -o table

# To set properly your desired subscription
az account set --subscription <id>

Create Service Principal

Kubernetes needs a service principal to manage the AKS cluster and other Azure resources

# Create Service Principal
az ad sp create-for-rbac --skip-assignment --name sp-test01 -o json

# Grant access to service principal perform changes in the subscription
az role assignment create --assignee <appId> \
--scope "/subscriptions/<subscription id>" \
--role Contributor

Environment variable

You can setup env variables via command line or pass the values through the terraform command line terraform -var

Fill out the env_vars.sh with your values and then run the command below

source env_vars.sh

Terraform

# Run terraform
terraform init
terraform plan

# To apply the changes
terraform apply

Connect to Kubernetes

az aks get-credentials -n aks-test01 -g aks-test01

Clean up

# Run terraform to destroy everything
terraform destroy

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