How to Deploy Applications on Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully managed Kubernetes container orchestration service that simplifies the deployment and management of containerized applications on Microsoft Azure. It provides a secure, reliable, and scalable platform for deploying and running containerized applications. In this blog post, we will walk you through the steps to deploy applications on AKS.

Prerequisites
Before we dive into the deployment process, you need to have the following prerequisites:

1. An Azure subscription with sufficient permissions to create resources.
2. A Docker image of the application you want to deploy.
3. Azure CLI installed on your local machine.

Step 1: Create an AKS Cluster
The first step is to create an AKS cluster. You can create a cluster using the Azure portal or the Azure CLI. In this example, we will use the Azure CLI to create an AKS cluster.

1. Open the Azure CLI on your local machine and log in to your Azure account using the az login command.
2. Create a resource group using the az group create command. For example:

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus

3. Create an AKS cluster using the az aks create command. For example:

az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --node-count 1 --generate-ssh-keys

The above command creates a single-node AKS cluster named “myAKSCluster” with an SSH key pair for authentication.

Step 2: Deploy Containers to AKS
Once you have created an AKS cluster, the next step is to deploy containers to the cluster. You can deploy containers to AKS using Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, or Azure DevOps.

In this example, we will use Kubernetes manifests to deploy a containerized application to AKS.

1. Create a Kubernetes manifest file with the deployment and service definitions. For example:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: myapp-deployment
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: myapp
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: myapp
spec:
containers:
- name: myapp-container
image: myapp:latest
ports:
- containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: myapp-service
spec:
selector:
app: myapp
ports:
- name: http
port: 80
targetPort: 80
type: LoadBalancer

The above manifest creates a deployment with three replicas of the containerized application and exposes the application through a load balancer service.

2. Apply the Kubernetes manifest using the kubectl apply command. For example:

kubectl apply -f myapp-manifest.yaml

The above command applies the manifest file to the AKS cluster, which creates the deployment and service resources.

Step 3: Manage the Application on AKS
Once you have deployed the containerized application to AKS, you can manage the application using Kubernetes commands or the Azure portal.

1. To view the status of the deployment, use the kubectl get command. For example:

kubectl get deployments

The above command displays the status of all the deployments in the AKS cluster.

2. To view the logs of a container, use the kubectl logs command. For example:

kubectl logs <pod-name>

The above command displays the logs of the container running in the specified pod.

3. To scale the deployment, use the kubectl scale command. For example:


kubectl scale deployment