AKS cluster setup¶

Use the AKS bootstrap to run this platform on Azure Kubernetes Service. It creates the cluster, configures Flux and Crossplane, and publishes this docs site through Azure DNS and Gateway API.

Automation and personal access use different contexts

The bootstrap fetches an admin kubeconfig for its unattended Flux setup. For day-to-day work, use a non-admin context authenticated through Entra ID and kubelogin.

Before you start¶

Install and authenticate these tools:

GitHub CLI (gh), Flux CLI (flux), kubectl, Azure CLI (az), and jq
kubelogin
An Azure subscription where you can create a resource group and service principal
Optional: Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator in the Entra ID tenant, to grant the Microsoft Graph permissions used for Entra ID groups

The bootstrap requires the Azure kubelogin binary. Install the Azure tap formula specifically:

brew tap azure/kubelogin
brew install azure/kubelogin/kubelogin

Use the Azure kubelogin package

brew install kubelogin installs a different OIDC plugin that provides kubectl-oidc_login, not the kubelogin binary required here. If it is already installed, remove it before installing the Azure formula:

brew uninstall kubelogin
brew tap azure/kubelogin
brew install azure/kubelogin/kubelogin

Authenticate the CLIs and select the Azure subscription you want to use:

gh auth login
az login

Configure the docs hostname¶

The DNS zone must already exist in Azure. Set its details in config-aks.yaml:

docs:
  dnsZone: demo.liasis.dev
  dnsZoneResourceGroup: rg-public-dns
  hostname: docs.demo.liasis.dev
  acmeEmail: you@example.com

The bootstrap manages the docs record, not the DNS zone itself. It refuses to continue if the zone is missing or acmeEmail is empty.

Bootstrap¶

Run this from the repository root:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="$(gh auth token)"
./infrastructure/bootstrap-aks.sh

The script creates the azure-crossplane-demo resource group and AKS cluster, registers the required Azure resource providers, and bootstraps Flux against your fork. It stores Crossplane credentials in the gitignored infrastructure/azure-credentials-aks.json and reuses that file on later runs. The service principal always receives an -aks suffix, separate from the local kiac identity.

FLUX_PATH defaults to clusters/aks. The script also fetches an admin kubeconfig context such as aks-azure-crossplane-demo-admin so its own kubectl and Flux operations do not require an interactive Entra ID login. Other optional environment variables match the local cluster bootstrap; SP_NAME always receives an -aks suffix (azure-crossplane-demo-aks by default).

Azure CLI may prompt to install extensions when Azure Monitor Metrics or Managed Grafana are enabled in the config. No extension is needed when both addons are disabled.

Verify the cluster¶

Allow Flux a few minutes to converge, then check Crossplane and the docs endpoint:

./infrastructure/verify-crossplane.sh --context aks-azure-crossplane-demo-admin
kubectl get certificate -n documentation-site
kubectl get gateway -n documentation-site
curl -sI https://docs.demo.liasis.dev | head -1

The first certificate can take several minutes while the DNS-01 challenge propagates. If you are rebuilding repeatedly, switch the Gateway issuer to letsencrypt-staging to avoid production rate limits.

What runs on AKS¶

AKS enables Entra ID authentication and Azure RBAC. Optional settings in config-aks.yaml include Cilium network policy, Azure Monitor Metrics, Managed Grafana, KEDA, and VPA. The cluster also installs these components to serve the docs site:

Component	Role
Gateway API CRDs	Rendered from the Envoy Gateway chart and applied directly by Flux; the bundle exceeds Helm's 1 MiB release limit.
Envoy Gateway	Terminates TLS and routes traffic. It replaces the retired `ingress-nginx` controller.
cert-manager	Issues the site's Let's Encrypt certificate through DNS-01.
external-dns	Writes the `docs.demo.liasis.dev` record using the Gateway address.

Regenerate the Gateway API CRD bundle

The checked-in CRDs come from Envoy Gateway chart version 1.9.2, using its standard Gateway API channel. When upgrading the pinned chart, render them directly rather than through a Helm release:

helm template gateway-api-crds \
  oci://docker.io/envoyproxy/gateway-crds-helm \
  --version 1.9.2 --namespace envoy-gateway-system \
  --set crds.gatewayAPI.enabled=true \
  --set crds.gatewayAPI.channel=standard \
  --set crds.envoyGateway.enabled=true

The bootstrap creates the secrets and azure-dns-config ConfigMap used by these components. The service principal is Contributor at subscription scope so it can write the site record in rg-public-dns; subscription-specific values are not committed to the repository.

Service principal permissions

The service principal is Contributor on the subscription and has the Microsoft Graph application permissions Group.ReadWrite.All and User.Read.All, used for Entra ID groups. Granting the Graph permissions needs a Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator. If you are neither, the bootstrap prints a warning and the commands to run, and continues without them. Only the Entra ID compositions need them. Re-running the bootstrap grants them to an existing service principal.

Node capacity¶

The system nodepool1 keeps three nodes active, with 30 pods per node. AKS Node Auto-Provisioning (NAP) adds a separate workshop pool of Linux D-series nodes on demand. It can scale back to zero and has an aggregate limit of 16 vCPU and 64 GiB; Azure quota and VM availability may lower the practical limit. Workloads are not restricted to a single pool.

The bootstrap disables AKS's uncapped default NAP pools. Flux applies the custom pool only after NAP installs its CRDs. Inspect provisioning with:

az aks show -g azure-crossplane-demo -n azure-crossplane-demo \
  --query nodeProvisioningProfile
kubectl get nodepool,aksnodeclass,nodeclaim
kubectl get nodes -L karpenter.sh/nodepool

The custom pool is defined in node-pool.yaml.

Access the cluster¶

The admin context created by bootstrap is for automation. For personal access, fetch a non-admin context and configure kubelogin:

az aks get-credentials --resource-group azure-crossplane-demo \
  --name azure-crossplane-demo --context aks-azure-crossplane-demo

# Use your existing Azure CLI session:
kubelogin convert-kubeconfig -l azurecli

# Or authenticate interactively with a device code:
kubelogin convert-kubeconfig -l devicecode

kubectl config use-context aks-azure-crossplane-demo

Your access is governed by the Azure RBAC role assigned to you. Use this non-admin context with AKS desktop, which requires Entra ID and Azure RBAC. The bootstrap removes its admin context during teardown, but does not remove personal contexts you fetched yourself.

Tear down¶

This deletes the AKS resource group

Teardown deletes the AKS cluster, Managed Grafana, the AKS service principal, and the DNS record created for the docs site. It does not delete the DNS zone or its resource group.

./infrastructure/teardown-aks.sh

For the local alternative, see Local cluster setup. For issues after bootstrap, see Troubleshooting.