Tutorial - Deploy an application to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Article
03/01/2024

Kubernetes provides a distributed platform for containerized applications. You build and deploy your own applications and services into a Kubernetes cluster and let the cluster manage the availability and connectivity.

In this tutorial, part four of seven, you deploy a sample application into a Kubernetes cluster. You learn how to:

Update a Kubernetes manifest file.
Run an application in Kubernetes.
Test the application.

Tip

With AKS, you can use the following approaches for configuration management:

GitOps: Enables declarations of your cluster's state to automatically apply to the cluster. To learn how to use GitOps to deploy an application with an AKS cluster, see the prerequisites for Azure Kubernetes Service clusters in the GitOps with Flux v2 tutorial.
DevOps: Enables you to build, test, and deploy with continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD). To see examples of how to use DevOps to deploy an application with an AKS cluster, see Build and deploy to AKS with Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions for deploying to Kubernetes.

Before you begin

In previous tutorials, you packaged an application into a container image, uploaded the image to Azure Container Registry, and created a Kubernetes cluster. To complete this tutorial, you need the precreated aks-store-quickstart.yaml Kubernetes manifest file. This file was downloaded in the application source code from Tutorial 1 - Prepare application for AKS.

This tutorial requires Azure CLI version 2.0.53 or later. Check your version with az --version. To install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Update the manifest file

In these tutorials, your Azure Container Registry (ACR) instance stores the container images for the sample application. To deploy the application, you must update the image names in the Kubernetes manifest file to include your ACR login server name.

Get your login server address using the az acr list command and query for your login server.

az acr list --resource-group myResourceGroup --query "[].{acrLoginServer:loginServer}" --output table

Make sure you're in the cloned aks-store-demo directory, and then open the manifest file with a text editor, such as vi.
```
vi aks-store-quickstart.yaml
```

Update the image property for the containers by replacing ghcr.io/azure-samples with your ACR login server name.

containers:
...
- name: order-service
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/order-service:latest
...
- name: product-service
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/product-service:latest
...
- name: store-front
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/store-front:latest
...

Save and close the file. In vi, use :wq.

Get your login server address using the Get-AzContainerRegistry cmdlet and query for your login server. Make sure you replace <acrName> with the name of your ACR instance.
```
(Get-AzContainerRegistry -ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup -Name <acrName>).LoginServer
```
Make sure you're in the cloned aks-store-demo directory, and then open the manifest file with a text editor, such as vi.
```
vi aks-store-quickstart.yaml
```

Update the image property for the containers by replacing ghcr.io/azure-samples with your ACR login server name.

containers:
...
- name: order-service
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/order-service:latest
...
- name: product-service
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/product-service:latest
...
- name: store-front
  image: <acrName>.azurecr.io/aks-store-demo/store-front:latest
...

Save and close the file. In vi, use :wq.

Run the application

Deploy the application using the kubectl apply command, which parses the manifest file and creates the defined Kubernetes objects.

kubectl apply -f aks-store-quickstart.yaml

The following example output shows the resources successfully created in the AKS cluster:

deployment.apps/rabbitmq created
service/rabbitmq created
deployment.apps/order-service created
service/order-service created
deployment.apps/product-service created
service/product-service created
deployment.apps/store-front created
service/store-front created

Check the deployment is successful by viewing the pods with kubectl
```
kubectl get pods
```

Deploy the application using the kubectl apply command, which parses the manifest file and creates the defined Kubernetes objects.

kubectl apply -f aks-store-quickstart.yaml

The following example output shows the resources successfully created in the AKS cluster:

deployment.apps/rabbitmq created
service/rabbitmq created
deployment.apps/order-service created
service/order-service created
deployment.apps/product-service created
service/product-service created
deployment.apps/store-front created
service/store-front created

Check the deployment is successful by viewing the pods with kubectl.
```
kubectl get pods
```

Deployment in azd is broken down into multiple stages represented by hooks. azd deploys with all hooks by default.

Deploy the application using the azd up command.
```
azd up
```

Select which subscription and region to host your Azure resources.

? Select an Azure Subscription to use:  [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
> 1. My Azure Subscription (xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Select an Azure location to use:  [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
> 43. (US) East US 2 (eastus2)

You can update the variables for AZURE_LOCATION and AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID from inside the .azure/<your-env-name>/.env file.

Test the application

When the application runs, a Kubernetes service exposes the application front end to the internet. This process can take a few minutes to complete.

Command Line

Monitor progress using the kubectl get service command with the --watch argument.
```
kubectl get service store-front --watch
```
Initially, the EXTERNAL-IP for the store-front service shows as pending:
```
store-front   LoadBalancer   10.0.34.242   <pending>     80:30676/TCP   5s
```
When the EXTERNAL-IP address changes from pending to an actual public IP address, use CTRL-C to stop the kubectl watch process.

The following example output shows a valid public IP address assigned to the service:
```
store-front   LoadBalancer   10.0.34.242   52.179.23.131   80:30676/TCP   67s
```
View the application in action by opening a web browser to the external IP address of your service.

If the application doesn't load, it might be an authorization problem with your image registry. To view the status of your containers, use the kubectl get pods command. If you can't pull the container images, see Authenticate with Azure Container Registry from Azure Kubernetes Service.

Azure portal

Navigate to your Azure portal to find your deployment information.

Open your Resource Group on the Azure portal
Navigate to the Kubernetes service for your cluster
Select Services and Ingress under Kubernetes Resources
Copy the External IP shown in the column for store-front
Paste the IP into your browser and visit your store page

Next steps

In this tutorial, you deployed a sample Azure application to a Kubernetes cluster in AKS. You learned how to:

Update a Kubernetes manifest file.
Run an application in Kubernetes.
Test the application.

In the next tutorial, you learn how to use PaaS services for stateful workloads in Kubernetes.

Use PaaS services for stateful workloads in AKS

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