Introduction

Provisioning and managing Kubernetes clusters can often be complex and time-consuming. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies this by providing a fully managed Kubernetes service in Azure. However, to automate the process of provisioning and configuring an AKS cluster, Pulumi—an open-source infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool—provides a powerful and flexible solution.

Pulumi allows developers to use familiar programming languages like TypeScript, Python, Go, and C# to define, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure. It offers a modern approach to cloud provisioning, enabling you to write real code for your infrastructure and benefit from version control, automation, and testing.

In this hands-on guide, we will focus on the process of provisioning and configuring an AKS cluster on Azure using Pulumi. Here's a high-level overview of the steps:

1. Set up Environment with Azure & Pulumi

   • Install Pulumi and Azure on your local machine.

   • Set up Pulumi's Azure provider, which will allow Pulumi to interact with Azure resources.

   • Define a Pulumi project in your preferred programming language.

2. Configure Kubernetes Resources

   • Configure the necessary Azure resources like a Resource Group, Virtual Network (VNet), and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster.

   • Create a Azure Container Registry

   • Specify details like node count, VM size, and networking options.

3. Provision the AKS Cluster

   • Create a new AKS cluster

   • Configure an AKS cluster to authenticate to an Azure Container Registry

   • Use Pulumi’s pulumi up command to provision and deploy the entire infrastructure.

   • Monitor the output for real-time status updates and ensure that all resources are created successfully.

4. Deploy Ingress Controller and Configure SSL/TLS

   • Deploy a Kubernetes ingress controller running NGINX

   • Deploy cert-manager by using Helm

   • Deploy a ClusterIssuer resource for Let's Encrypt

5. Deploy Application

   • Once the AKS cluster is up and running, Pulumi can also be used to define Kubernetes resources like Deployments, Services, and Ingress.

   • Enable SSL/TLS for the ratings web service on Ingress

   • Pulumi integrates with Kubernetes, allowing you to seamlessly manage both cloud and Kubernetes resources in a unified way.

6. Clearn Up

Application Architecture

Infrastructure Components

Resource Group

A logical container which holds all resources needed to run the above solution in Azure

AKS Cluster

The application microservices will run in this cluster