Azure Container Instances (ACI) provide a hosted environment for running containers in Azure. When using ACI, there is no need to manage the underlying compute infrastructure, Azure handles this management for you. When running containers in ACI, you are charged by the second for each running container.
The Azure Container Instances provider for the Virtual Kubelet configures an ACI instance as a node in any Kubernetes cluster. When using the Virtual Kubelet ACI provider, pods can be scheduled on an ACI instance as if the ACI instance is a standard Kubernetes node. This configuration allows you to take advantage of both the capabilities of Kubernetes and the management value and cost benefit of ACI.
This document details configuring the Virtual Kubelet ACI provider.
This guide assumes that you have a Kubernetes cluster up and running (can be minikube
) and that kubectl
is already configured to talk to it.
Other pre-requesites are:
- A Microsoft Azure account.
- Install the Azure CLI.
- Install the Kubernetes CLI.
- Install the Helm CLI.
Install az
by following the instructions for your operating system.
See the full installation instructions if yours isn't listed below.
brew install azure-cli
Download and run the Azure CLI Installer (MSI).
- Add the azure-cli repo to your sources:
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ wheezy main" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list
- Run the following commands to install the Azure CLI and its dependencies:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver packages.microsoft.com --recv-keys 52E16F86FEE04B979B07E28DB02C46DF417A0893 sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install azure-cli
Install kubectl
by running the following command:
az aks install-cli
Helm is a tool for installing pre-configured applications on Kubernetes.
Install helm
by running the following command:
brew install kubernetes-helm
- Download the latest Helm release.
- Decompress the tar file.
- Copy helm.exe to a directory on your PATH.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/helm/master/scripts/get | bash
Now that we have all the tools, we will set up your Azure account to work with ACI.
First let's identify your Azure subscription and save it for use later on in the quickstart.
-
Run
az login
and follow the instructions in the command output to authorizeaz
to use your account -
List your Azure subscriptions:
az account list -o table
-
Copy your subscription ID and save it in an environment variable:
Bash
export AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="<SubscriptionId>"
PowerShell
$env:AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID = "<SubscriptionId>"
To use Azure Container Instances, you must provide a resource group. Create one with the az cli using the following command.
export ACI_REGION=eastus
az group create --name aci-group --location "$ACI_REGION"
export AZURE_RG=aci-group
This creates an identity for the Virtual Kubelet ACI provider to use when provisioning resources on your account on behalf of Kubernetes.
-
Create a service principal with RBAC enabled for the quickstart:
az ad sp create-for-rbac --name virtual-kubelet-quickstart -o table
-
Save the values from the command output in environment variables:
Bash
export AZURE_TENANT_ID=<Tenant> export AZURE_CLIENT_ID=<AppId> export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=<Password>
PowerShell
$env:AZURE_TENANT_ID = "<Tenant>" $env:AZURE_CLIENT_ID = "<AppId>" $env:AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET = "<Password>"
You will need to enable ACI in your subscription:
```console
az provider register -n Microsoft.ContainerInstance
```
Run these commands to deploy the virtual kubelet which connects your Kubernetes cluster to Azure Container Instances.
If your cluster is an AKS cluster:
export VK_RELEASE=virtual-kubelet-for-aks-0.1.3
For any other type of Kubernetes cluster:
export VK_RELEASE=virtual-kubelet-0.1.0
RELEASE_NAME=virtual-kubelet
NODE_NAME=virtual-kubelet
CHART_URL=https://github.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual-kubelet/raw/master/charts/$VK_RELEASE.tgz
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual-kubelet/master/scripts/createCertAndKey.sh > createCertAndKey.sh
chmod +x createCertAndKey.sh
. ./createCertAndKey.sh
helm install "$CHART_URL" --name "$RELEASE_NAME" \
--set env.azureClientId="$AZURE_CLIENT_ID",env.azureClientKey="$AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET",env.azureTenantId="$AZURE_TENANT_ID",env.azureSubscriptionId="$AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID",env.aciResourceGroup="$AZURE_RG",env.nodeName="$NODE_NAME",env.nodeOsType=<Linux|Windows>,env.apiserverCert=$cert,env.apiserverKey=$key
Output:
NAME: virtual-kubelet
LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Feb 15 13:17:01 2018
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: DEPLOYED
RESOURCES:
==> v1/Secret
NAME TYPE DATA AGE
virtual-kubelet-virtual-kubelet Opaque 3 1s
==> v1beta1/Deployment
NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
virtual-kubelet-virtual-kubelet 1 1 1 0 1s
==> v1/Pod(related)
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
virtual-kubelet-virtual-kubelet-7bcf5dc749-6mvgp 0/1 ContainerCreating 0 1s
NOTES:
The virtual kubelet is getting deployed on your cluster.
To verify that virtual kubelet has started, run:
kubectl --namespace=default get pods -l "app=virtual-kubelet-virtual-kubelet"
To validate that the Virtual Kubelet has been installed, return a list of Kubernetes nodes using the kubectl get nodes command. You should see a node that matches the name given to the ACI connector.
kubectl get nodes
Output:
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
virtual-kubelet Ready <none> 2m v1.8.3
aks-nodepool1-39289454-0 Ready agent 22h v1.7.7
aks-nodepool1-39289454-1 Ready agent 22h v1.7.7
aks-nodepool1-39289454-2 Ready agent 22h v1.7.7
Create a file named virtual-kubelet-test.yaml
and copy in the following YAML. Replace the nodeName
value with the name given to the virtual kubelet node.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: helloworld
spec:
containers:
- image: microsoft/aci-helloworld
imagePullPolicy: Always
name: helloworld
resources:
requests:
memory: 1G
cpu: 1
ports:
- containerPort: 80
name: http
protocol: TCP
- containerPort: 443
name: https
dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
nodeName: virtual-kubelet
Run the application with the kubectl create command.
kubectl create -f virtual-kubelet-test.yml
Use the kubectl get pods command with the -o wide
argument to output a list of pods with the scheduled node.
kubectl get pods -o wide
Notice that the helloworld
pod is running on the virtual-kubelet
node.
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE
aci-helloworld-2559879000-8vmjw 1/1 Running 0 39s 52.179.3.180 virtual-kubelet
To validate that the container is running in an Azure Container Instance, use the az container list Azure CLI command.
az container list -o table
Output:
Name ResourceGroup ProvisioningState Image IP:ports CPU/Memory OsType Location
------------------------------- --------------- ------------------- ------------------------ --------------- --------------- -------- ----------
helloworld-2559879000-8vmjw myResourceGroup Succeeded microsoft/aci-helloworld 52.179.3.180:80 1.0 core/1.5 gb Linux eastus
You can remove your Virtual Kubelet node by deleting the Helm deployment. Run the following command:
helm delete virtual-kubelet --purge