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

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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][gitops-flux-tutorial-aks] in the [GitOps with Flux v2][gitops-flux-tutorial] 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.

  1. 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

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

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

  4. Save and close the file.

Run the application

  1. 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:

    statefulset.apps/rabbitmq created
configmap/rabbitmq-enabled-plugins 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

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

    kubectl get pods

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

  1. 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

  2. When the EXTERNAL-IP address changes from <pending> to a 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

  3. View the application in action by opening a web browser and navigating to the external IP address of your service: http://<external-ip>.

    Screenshot of AKS Store sample application.

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 the Azure portal to find your deployment information.

  1. Navigate to your AKS cluster resource.

  2. From the service menu, under Kubernetes Resources, select Services and ingresses.

  3. Copy the External IP shown in the column for the store-front service.

  4. Paste the IP into your browser to visit your store page.

    Screenshot of AKS Store sample application.

Clean up resources

Since you validated the application's functionality, you can now remove the cluster from the application. We will deploy the application again in the next tutorial.

  1. Stop and remove the container instances and resources using the kubectl delete command.

    kubectl delete -f aks-store-quickstart.yaml

  2. Check that all the application pods have been removed using the kubectl get pods command.

    kubectl get pods

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