Azure Fundamentals · Lesson

Deploying Workloads on AKS

Create an AKS cluster, deploy a multi-container application using kubectl and Helm charts, and expose it externally with an Azure Load Balancer service.

What Is Azure Kubernetes Service?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes offering where Microsoft operates and maintains the control plane (API server, etcd, scheduler) at no cost. You only pay for the worker nodes (VMs). AKS handles Kubernetes version upgrades, node OS patching, control plane scaling, and integration with Azure networking, storage, and identity. This dramatically reduces the operational overhead of running Kubernetes in production.

Creating an AKS Cluster

Create an AKS cluster with az aks create, specifying the node count, VM size, and networking options. AKS automatically creates a node resource group containing the VMs, managed disks, NICs, and load balancers. The recommended networking mode is Azure CNI — each pod gets a real VNet IP address, enabling direct connectivity with other Azure services without NAT.

# Create an AKS cluster with 3 nodes
az aks create \
  --name myAKSCluster \
  --resource-group MyRG \
  --location eastus \
  --node-count 3 \
  --node-vm-size Standard_D2s_v3 \
  --enable-managed-identity \
  --attach-acr mycontainerregistry \
  --network-plugin azure \
  --generate-ssh-keys

# Get kubectl credentials
az aks get-credentials --name myAKSCluster --resource-group MyRG

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