🚦 Deploying Kubernetes
Deploying a Kubernetes can be extremely complex, with many networking, compute and other aspects to consider. However for the purposes of this workshop, a default and basic K3s cluster can be deployed very quickly.
🚀 Virtual Machine Deployment
Use the following commands to create a VM and a resource group:
# Create Azure resource group
az group create --name $RES_GROUP --location $REGION
# Create cluster
az vm create \
--resource-group $RES_GROUP \
--name $VM_NAME \
--image UbuntuLTS \
--public-ip-sku Standard \
--size Standard_D2s_v3 \
--admin-username azureuser \
--generate-ssh-keys
# Open two additional ports on the VM, that'll be used later
az network nsg rule create --resource-group $RES_GROUP --nsg-name ${VM_NAME}NSG --name AllowNodePorts --protocol tcp --priority 1001 --destination-port-ranges 30036 30037
Save the VMs public IP and SSH key files for use in the next steps
🌐Connect to the VM from VSCode
To make creating files easier on the machine it’s recommended to use VS Code Remote extension with SSH to connect to the VM. See the documentation here for more on developing on Remote Machines using SSH and Visual Studio Code.
It’s also highly recommended to get the Kubernetes extension.
🤘 Set up K3s cluster
Run all of these commands inside of your VM.
First, let’s install the K3S cluster and tools in the VM:
# Install kubectl
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kubectl
# Install K3S
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
# Install helm
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/benc-uk/tools-install/master/helm.sh | bash
# Optionally install Azure CLI
curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash
📝 NOTE: Login into the Azure CLI if you’ve installed it.
Let’s connect your kubectl with k3s and allow your user permissions to access the cluster.
echo "export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml" >> ~/.bashrc
sudo chown azureuser /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml
sudo chown azureuser /etc/rancher/k3s
Then let’s set up the VM user profile for K3s to make it easier to run all the commands:
echo "source <(kubectl completion bash)" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "alias k=kubectl" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=$PATH:/home/azureuser/.local/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
Double check that everything in installed and working correctly with:
# For bashrc changes to take affect in your current terminal, you must reload bashrc with:
. ~/.bashrc
# Try commands
k get pods -A
helm
⏯️ Appendix - Stopping & Starting the VM
If you are concerned about the costs for running the VM you can stop and start it at any time.
# Stop the VM
az vm stop --resource-group $RES_GROUP --name $AKS_NAME
# Start the VM
az vm start --resource-group $RES_GROUP --name $AKS_NAME
📝 NOTE: Start and stop operations do take several minutes to complete, so typically you would perform them only at the start or end of the day.