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Demystifying Azure Kubernetes Service with Github Actions from Scratch

Aditya Narayan Nayak's photo
Aditya Narayan Nayak
·

4 min read

Demystifying Azure Kubernetes Service with Github Actions from Scratch

Table of contents

Github Action

GitHub Actions gives developers the ability to automate their workflows across issues, pull requests, and more with cloud-native CI/CD functionality

actions.png

Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Kubernetes Service is a managed container orchestration service based on the open source Kubernetes ecosystem, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud.

azure-kubernetes-service.png

Github Workflow

  • Github Workflow Automate Test, Build, and Deployment, Also they execute on hosted virtual environment

Github Action with Azure Kubernetes Service

  • AKS Action allows developers to interact with the Kubernetes clusters from GitHub Workflow easily, they can be used alone or together. It makes them very reusable and modular.

  • Azure starter workflow provides templates for getting started with deploying to AKS or any Kubernetes cluster

  • Workflows run in response to events such as pushing to a branch, adding a tag, and making a pull request. They can be run at Cronjob and also by the user itself with a workflow dispatch.

    Git And Github Version Control.png

Too much theory it's time for Demo

Demo

Step 1:- Create a New Azure Kubernetes service Cluster from Scratch

  • First, log in to Azure Portal

  • On the Azure portal menu or from the Home page, select Create a resource.

  • Select Containers > Kubernetes Service.

  • On the Basics page, configure the following options:

create-cluster-basics.png

  • Select Next: Node pools when complete.

  • Keep the thing's default and click Review+Create

  • It takes a few minutes to create the AKS cluster. When your deployment is complete then navigate to Resources. Here you can see your Kubernetes cluster like this.

aks-portal-dashboard.png

  • After that connect your cluster simply by clicking the Connect button on the top of the resource and just follow the instruction.

Step 2:- Get the Repo and add Azure Workflow

  • Now it's time to move to Github Repository and fork this Repository. Basically, it's a Demo Python voting app.

  • Then go to "Action" and create your own workflow by simply clicking "New Workflow" at the top of the page

Screenshot (360).jpg

  • There you can search "AKS" and Click on "Deploy to AKS"

Screenshot (361).jpg

Step 3:- Configure

Now it's time to configure. To configure this workflow:

  1. Set the following secrets in your repository (instructions for getting these can be found at docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/developer/gi..):
    • AZURE_CLIENT_ID
    • AZURE_TENANT_ID
    • AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
  2. Set the following environment variables (or replace the values in workflow):
    • AZURE_CONTAINER_REGISTRY (name of your container registry / ACR)
    • RESOURCE_GROUP (where your cluster is deployed)
    • CLUSTER_NAME (name of your AKS cluster)
    • CONTAINER_NAME (name of the container image you would like to push up to your ACR)
    • IMAGE_PULL_SECRET_NAME (name of the ImagePullSecret that will be created to pull your ACR image)
    • DEPLOYMENT_MANIFEST_PATH (path to the manifest yaml for your deployment)

Step 4:- Run the workflow

Screenshot (363).png

Now commit the changes

Step 5:- check pod

  • Wait for confirmation In the meantime you can go to shell.azure.com and Run the command 
    kubectl get po

    kubectl get svc
  • There you can see External IP, If it's pending just run the below command again 
    kubectl get svc

Screenshot (364).png

  • To see the Azure Vote app in action, open a web browser to the external IP address of your service.

azure-voting-application.png

  • If you want to change the app then navigate to Repo -> Azure vote -> Azure-vote -> config_file.cfg -> change the values and commit the changes

  • Then In Action Again Run the Workflow and Refresh the browser

Official Docs Azure Kubernetes Service deployment pipeline and GitHub Actions Link:- (docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/aks-..)

Hurray we got our web app 🎉🎉🥂

Summary:-

As we can see, we can directly interact with the Azure Kubernetes cluster completely from Github

Also, Github Action has so many options you can add more steps in the Job

In deploy, GitHub Action has many strategic options like Canary Deployment including service mesh interface or Kubernetes only and blue-green deployment.

Thank you for reading. Have a great day

aksKubernetesGitHub ActionsAzureDevops