Git going with GitOps on AKS: A Step-by-Step Guide using FluxCD AKS Extension

In reading through @StevenMurawski’s blog post titled, What Really is GitOps? we learned that GitOps is a way to do Continuous Delivery of our applications on Kubernetes.

In this post, I will jump right into how you can “git” going with GitOps by enabling the FluxCD AKS Extension on your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and using a tool called Kustomize to help with Kubernetes configuration management.

We’ll deploy my new favorite demo app, AKS Store Demo to our AKS cluster and then make some changes to the application and see how FluxCD handles them.

Installing .NET on Ubuntu

Installing .NET on Ubuntu is supposed to be easy. Sometimes it’s not. You should be able to follow the instructions on the Microsoft docs and install from a package manager but I’ve had issues with that. It’s been a frustrating experience; the package installs but then I can’t run dotnet --version and I can’t figure out why.

Thankfully there is an option to manually install .NET, this is what I’ve had the most success with.

Pushing Multi-Architecture Container Images

Introduction

My previous article, Building Multi-Architecture Container Images, covered the basics of building multi-architecture container images using Docker Buildx. In this article, we’ll explore how to push multi-architecture container images to Azure Container Registry (ACR) using GitHub Actions.

What is a GitHub Action?

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) platform built into GitHub. It allows you to automate, customize, and execute your software development workflows. Using GitHub Actions, you can create workflows that respond to GitHub events, such as push, issue creation, or a new release.

Building Multi-Architecture Container Images

Introduction

Over the past several years, we’ve seen the emergence of the ARM64 architecture, which is gaining popularity due to its energy efficiency and performance benefits. We often seen these processors in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. We also seen them in our IoT devices, such as smartwatches and smart TVs. Now, we are starting to see increased adoption of ARM64 processors in servers and personal computers.

This emergence of the ARM64 architecture, means that we now have two major processor architectures to consider when building and deploying our containerized applications in order to maximize our application’s reach.

Does Workload Identity on AKS work across tenants?

Introduction

An interesting use case for Workload Identity came up recently. I was asked if a Pod in an AKS cluster that was deployed in one tenant can access Azure resources within another tenant.

I’ve configured Workload Identity on AKS many times, and I thought “in theory” it should “just work”, but I never tested it across tenants. So I decided to give it a try.

TL;DR: Yes, it does work.

Streamline Network Observability on AKS: A Step-by-Step Guide to enable the AKS add-on with Terraform

Have you ever had to troubleshoot network issues in your Kubernetes clusters? If so, you know how challenging it can be to identify and resolve problems.

To troubleshoot network issues you probably had to use a combination of tools like kubectl, tcpdump, wireshark, and netstat. The list goes on and on… While these tools are great for debugging and capturing network logs and traces, they don’t provide a holistic view of your cluster’s network traffic.

Efficient Configuration Management in AKS: Integrating Azure App Configuration for Seamless Loading of Key-Value Pairs into Config Maps

Did you know that Azure App Configuration Service is a managed service that helps you centralize your application configuration? It provides a way to store all your app configs in one place and manage them centrally. It also provides a way to manage feature flags and control feature rollouts. I highlighted the feature management capabilities in a breakout session the Microsoft Build conference a few weeks ago. If you have not watched the session yet, you can find the recording here