How to Deploy Docker Containers into AKS cluster using Azure Pipelines | Deploy Docker Image into AKS cluster using Azure Release Pipelines

We are going to learn how to deploy Docker containers into Azure Kubernetes Cluster(AKS) using Azure pipelines.

Pre-requisites:

1. AKS cluster needs to be up running. You can create AKS cluster using one of the below options:

• Create AKS cluster in Azure portal directly
• Create AKS cluster using Azure CLI
• Create AKS cluster using Terraform

2. ACR is also setup in Azure cloud. 

3. Already created Azure DevOps dashboard in 

https://dev.azure.com/

4. Dockerfile created along with the application source code

5. Make sure AKS has pull access from ACR

Implementation Steps

Step 1 - Create Azure Build pipeline for building Docker images and uploading into ACR

Step 2 - Create Azure Release pipeline for deploying Docker containers into AKS

 

Step 1 - How to create a Azure Build Pipeline

1. Login into your Azure DevOps dashboard

2. Click on Pipelines.

3. Click on New Pipeline

4. Click on use the classic editor

Enter your repo name and branch name where you have stored your source code along with Dockerfile

Click on Continue. Now choose the template by typing Docker, Select Docker container and Apply.

 

Now pipeline is created with two tasks already. We need to configure it.

Let's modify Build an image task.

Select Push an image task

Add a task for Copying YAML file, enter the Kubernetes deployment YAML file

Add Publish artifact task

Now click Save + Queue and run to start Building the pipeline

Once the build is completed, you should be able to see the Docker images under 

Services --> Repositories

Step 2 - How to Create Release pipeline for deploying Docker containers into AKS Cluster 

Go to Pipelines --> Click on Releases --> New Release pipeline

Click on Stage 1 and choose a template by selecting

Deploy to a Kubernetes cluster and click on Apply

Change the stage name to Deploy to AKS

Now click on Add an artifact

Select the Build pipeline and click on the latest version

Now click on Deploy to AKS stage

Click on kubectl apply

Now Click on New to enter AKS cluster connection info

Choose the Azure subscription and enter Microsoft user credentials.

Select AKS cluster from the drop down, choose default namespace

Choose command as apply and select the yaml file from the dropdown from Configuration file 

Now click on Save,

Click on Create a release

and then click Create to run the deployment

Click on Stage to see the logs

Now you will the following tasks are in green to confirm Deployment was successful.

Let's check if deployment created any pods

kubectl get deployments

kubectl get pods

kubectl get svc

Now try to access application running inside AKS cluster by using external IP and port number

Go to the browser enter http://external IP:5000

Certificate verification failed: The certificate is NOT trusted | Jenkins installation Error Fix | Jenkins Installation on Ubuntu 18.0.4

Running sudo apt-get update on my AWS EC2 Ubuntu 18.04.01 LTS instance fails because Certificate verification failed: The certificate is NOT trusted.

Err:6 https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/ Release

Certificate verification failed: The certificate is NOT trusted. The certificate chain uses expired certificate.  Could not handshake: Error in the certificate verification. [IP: 199.232.66.133 443]

Fix for the above error

You need to install certificates to overcome this error:

sudo apt install ca-certificates

sudo apt-get update

Now try installing Jenkins

sudo apt install jenkins -y

How to upload Docker Images into Azure Container Registry using Azure Pipelines | Automate Docker builds using Azure Pipelines | Upload Docker Images into Azure Container Registry (ACR)

We will learn how to build Docker image and upload Docker images into Azure Container Registry(ACR) using Azure Build pipelines.

Pre-requisites:

1. ACR is setup in Azure cloud. (see below for the steps)

2. Already created Azure DevOps dashboard in 

https://dev.azure.com/

3. Dockerfile created along with the application source code

How to Create Azure Container Registry?

First Create Resource Group

Make sure you are login to Azure portal first.

az login

Execute below command to create a resource group in Azure portal.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location southcentralus

Run the below command to create your own private container registry using Azure Container Registry (ACR).

az acr create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myacrrepo31 --sku Standard --location southcentralus

You can login to Azure portal to see the ACR repo.

How to create a Azure Build Pipeline

1. Login into your Azure DevOps dashboard

2. Click on Pipelines.

3. Click on New Pipeline

4. Click on use the classic editor

Enter your repo name and branch name where you have stored your source code along with Dockerfile

Click on Continue. Now choose the template by typing Docker, Select Docker container and Apply.

 

Now pipeline is created with two tasks already. We need to configure it.

Let's modify Build an image task.

Select Push an image task

Add a task for Copying YAML file, enter the Kubernetes deployment YAML file

Add Publish artifact task

Now click Save + Queue and run to start Building the pipeline

Once the build is completed, you should be able to see the Docker images under 

Services --> Repositories

Please watch the above steps in YouTube Channel:

How to create AKS cluster using Terraform | Create Kubernetes Cluster using Terraform

How to create AKS cluster using Terraform

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed container orchestration service, based on the open source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. AKS allows you to quickly deploy a production ready Kubernetes cluster in Azure, deploy and manage containerized applications more easily with a fully managed Kubernetes service. We will see how to create AKS cluster in Azure cloud using Terraform.

AKS cluster can be created by many ways as mentioned below:

1. Create AKS cluster in Azure portal directly

2. Create AKS cluster using Azure CLI

3. Create AKS cluster using Terraform. 

Creating an AKS resource with Terraform is incredibly easy, it only requires a single resource azurerm_kubernetes_cluster and in this post, we are going to walk through the necessary steps to create this with Terraform. We will create ACR and create a role with ACRpull assignment as well

Pre-requisites:

• Terraform is installed on your machine.
• Account setup in Azure.
  
• Kubectl is installed on your machine
• Azure cli is installed

Login to Azure using credentials

Make sure you are login to Azure portal first.

az login

Choose your Microsoft credentials. 

Let's create following tf files using Visual studio Code:

1. Variables.tf - where we will define the variables used in main.tf
2. terraform.tfvars - Declare the values for the variables

3. providers.tf - declare the providers with version

4. main.tf - main configuration file with all the resources which will be created

5. output.tf - Export some data to output file

create providers.tf

provider "azurerm" {

  features {}

}

terraform {

  required_providers {

    azurerm = {

      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"

      version = "3.62.1"

    }

  }

}

create variables.tf

variable "resource_group_name" {
  type        = string
  description = "RG name in Azure"
}
variable "location" {
  type        = string
  description = "Resources location in Azure"
}
variable "cluster_name" {
  type        = string
  description = "AKS name in Azure"
}
variable "kubernetes_version" {
  type        = string
  description = "Kubernetes version"
}
variable "system_node_count" {
  type        = number
  description = "Number of AKS worker nodes"
}
variable "acr_name" {
  type        = string
  description = "ACR name"
}

create terraform.tfvars

resource_group_name = "aks_tf_rg"

location            = "CentralUS"

cluster_name        = "my-aks-cluster"

kubernetes_version  = "1.26.3"

system_node_count   = 2

acr_name            = "myacr321012"

create main.tf

#In Azure, all infrastructure elements such as virtual machines, storage, and our Kubernetes cluster need to be attached to a resource group.

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "aks-rg" {

  name     = var.resource_group_name

  location = var.location

}

resource "azurerm_role_assignment" "role_acrpull" {

  scope                            = azurerm_container_registry.acr.id

  role_definition_name             = "AcrPull"

  principal_id                     = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.kubelet_identity.0.object_id

  skip_service_principal_aad_check = true

}

resource "azurerm_container_registry" "acr" {

  name                = var.acr_name

  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.aks-rg.name

  location            = var.location

  sku                 = "Standard"

  admin_enabled       = false

}

resource "azurerm_kubernetes_cluster" "aks" {

  name                = var.cluster_name

  kubernetes_version  = var.kubernetes_version

  location            = var.location

  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.aks-rg.name

  dns_prefix          = var.cluster_name

  default_node_pool {

    name                = "system"

    node_count          = var.system_node_count

    vm_size             = "Standard_DS2_v2"

    type                = "VirtualMachineScaleSets"

    zones  = [1, 2, 3]

    enable_auto_scaling = false

  }

  identity {

    type = "SystemAssigned"

  }

  network_profile {

    load_balancer_sku = "standard"

    network_plugin    = "kubenet" 

  }

}

create output.tf

output "aks_id" {

  value = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.id

}

output "aks_fqdn" {

  value = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.fqdn

}

output "aks_node_rg" {

  value = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.node_resource_group

}

output "acr_id" {

  value = azurerm_container_registry.acr.id

}

output "acr_login_server" {

  value = azurerm_container_registry.acr.login_server

}

resource "local_file" "kubeconfig" {

  depends_on   = [azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks]

  filename     = "kubeconfig"

  content      = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.kube_config_raw

}

Run terraform commands

terraform init

terraform validate

just to make sure syntax is right..

terraform plan

terraform apply

and type yes

You will see following resources are created:

Move the generated Kubeconfig file to ~/.kube/config

mv kubeconfig ~/.kube/config

To verify if worker nodes are created, use the kubectl get nodes command to return a list of the cluster nodes.

kubectl get nodes

 

You will see worker nodes with health status ready.

Let's deploy some apps into AKS cluster. 

Deploy Nginx App

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/website/master/content/en/examples/controllers/nginx-deployment.yaml

Once the deployment is created, use kubectl to check on the deployments by running this command: 

kubectl get deployments

To see the list of pods

kubectl get pods

Perform cleanup by deleting the AKS cluster

To avoid Azure charges, you should clean up unneeded resources. When the cluster is no longer needed, use terraform destroy command to remove the resource group, AKS cluster service, and all related resources. 

terraform destroy --auto-approve

Watch this step on YouTube channel:

How to install Terraform on Red Hat Linux | TerraForm Installation on Red Hat Linux

 Terraform is an infrastructure as a code tool used for provisioning infrastructure on most of the cloud platforms. 

• Open source
• Can setup entire infrastructure by writing Terraform scripts/templates. 
• Based on declarative model
• Uses Hashi Corp Language(HCL) which is JSON format

You can watch this on YouTube channel:

Please find steps for installing Terraform On Enterprise Red Hat Linux.

Create a working directory

sudo mkdir -p /opt/terraform

cd /opt/terraform

Install wget utility
sudo yum install wget -y

Download Terraform from Hasicorp website

sudo wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.0.5/terraform_1.0.5_linux_amd64.zip

Install unzip utility
sudo yum install unzip -y

Unzip Terraform Zip file
sudo unzip terraform_1.0.5_linux_amd64.zip

Add terraform to PATH
sudo mv /opt/terraform/terraform /usr/bin/

terraform -version

Terraform v1.0.5

on linux_amd64

this should show version of Terraform.