Deploying Kubernetes on top of Azure Stack (Development Kit)

If you had a chance to deploy Azure Stack or Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) in your environment, maybe you’ve asked yourself “OK, but what should I do with it now?“.

Well, one of many things you “can do with it” is offer your users to deploy Kubernetes clusters on top of it (at least, that was what I did the other day… on my ASDK deployment) – in short, official documentation has you pretty much covered. I know, Azure enables it as well… and the process here is similar, or – the same.

The main thing you have to decide at the beginning, is if you’ll use Azure AD or ADFS for identity management (the same as with Azure Stack deployment, if you remember, from my previous posts). Why – because the installation steps differ a bit.

Once you decide it (or you ask your Azure Stack administrator how it’s done in your case), you can proceed with the installation – I assume you have your Azure Stack/ASDK up and running.

Next, in the admin portal (https://adminportal.local.azurestack.external/), you’ll need to add the prerequisites from Azure Marketplace (for this, if you remember, your Azure Stack/ASDK has to be registered):

Once done, you’re ready to set up the service principal, to which you’ll then assign the required permissions on both – the Azure side and on the Azure Stack side! (don’t forget this detail… it is well documented, but easy to overlook)

In case you don’t give your service principal the required permissions on both “sides”, you’ll probably get the “error 12” and your deployment will fail:

And you can see details in the log:

So… be careful with service principal and permissions! 🙂

Next thing you’ll need to make sure of is that you create a plan and an offer, but set your quotas right! It depends on your Kubernetes cluster deployment settings, but if you’ll go with the defaults, the default quotas (disk, in particular) need to be expanded!

If not, you’ll probably get this error:

If you were careful while reading the official docs (with a few “lessons learned” in this post), and you’ve made it to here… you’re probably set to deploy your first Kubernetes cluster on top of your Azure Stack/ASDK.

In the user portal (https://portal.local.azurestack.external/), you now have the option to deploy something called Kubernetes Cluster (preview):

Here you really can’t miss much – you’ll give your deployment a brand new (or empty) resource group, user details (together with your public SSH key, of course), DNS prefix, number and size of nodes and service principal details:

After that, your deployment starts and runs for some time (it, again, depends on your hardware and settings you’ve chosen for your cluster). Hopefully, it will end with this message:

If all is good, you can SSH into one of your master nodes and see the details of your cluster:

One other thing that would be nice to have is the Kubernetes dashboard – the process of enabling it is well documented here:

And – you’re done!

You now have your own Kubernetes cluster deployment on top of your Azure Stack/ASDK! How cool is that?! 🙂

One last thing to note – currently, this is in preview (as it says on the template), but… it works. 🙂

Cheers!

Microsoft AZ-500 down, more to go

Another month, another Azure cert! 🙂

So, for the last couple of weeks, I was reading about, learning and playing around with Azure security technologies, mainly as a preparation for AZ-500 (Microsoft Azure Security Technologies) exam.

And then… today I took the exam and… PASSED!

I must say, with a few certificates under my sleeve, this exam was not the easiest I took. I was feeling prepared and still – passing it demanded concentration on the details and a bit of thinking! Nonetheless, it’s over now – one down, more to go!

Note that… by passing this exam, I’m not automatically an Azure security guru (!) – it just means that I know a thing or two about what Azure offers in terms of security and how it works. 🙂

What did I use to prepare?

There is a great book about Azure governance called Pro Azure Governance and Security, written by my MVP colleagues Peter De Tender, David Rendon and Samuel Erskine. It’s purpose is not to be an exam prep guide, but to tackle into the world of governance and security features available within Microsoft Azure (which are part of the exam, who would know).

There is also a great post, containing a bunch of helpful AZ-500 material from Stanislas Quastana, located here, and Thomas provided some useful links in his post here and even did a webinar on Azure Security Center (hosted by Altaro) the other day – you can find the recording here.

Of course, there is also the official exam page with skills measured and docs.com.

And… don’t forget to try things out yourself! There is also a free Azure subscription, you know?! 🙂

If you’ll be taking this exam – good luck, hope this resources help you!

Cheers!