Automatic notification of the latest AKS version in Azure with an Azure Logic app and an Azure Function

New releases of Kubernetes follow each other in rapid succession. Azure must support the version of Kubernetes in order to also offer it with AKS.
I would like to know when a new version of Kubernetes will be supported in AKS. This can be checked manually with the Azure CLI. However, I do not want to do this manually every now and then. That’s why I automated the process that checks the latest version of Kubernetes in AKS. The process tweets a message when a new version has been released. In addition, the process also notifies via twitter when a new location in Azure supports AKS. The proces is automated by serverless resources in Azure: with an Azure Function and an Azure Logic app. The twitter account @azureaksupdates notifies about the latest version and latest locations of AKS.

Persistent Storage and Volumes using Kubernetes on Azure with AKS or Azure Container Service

Many applications hosted in a Docker container need a volume to store data on or to read from. The data can’t be stored in the Docker container itself because the data will be lost after a restart or when the container crashes. Persistent Storage has an independent lifecycle of a Pod. This blogposts shows the most used possibilities to use persistent storage using Kubernetes on Azure.

Connect to a Node via SSH within a Kubernetes cluster on Azure Container Service

This blogpost was not possible without the help of Andreas Lindeboom, my Xebia colleague of XITA. Thanks!

In case of problems with a node of a Kubernetes cluster you probably want to read the logfiles on a Node of the Kubernetes Cluster, as described here. This Kubernetes cluster is created with Azure Container Service (ACS).

Handling settings and Environment Variables of your .NET Core 2 application hosted in a Docker container during development and on Kubernetes (Helm to the resque)

You have developed a microservice in .NET Core 2 and want to host it as a Docker Container in Kubernetes. Your Microservice contains settings, some appsettings or connectionstrings for example. These settings differ over environments. You can treat this configuration for Kubernetes on different ways. This blogposts shows you how to handle settings over environments prepared for Continuous Delivery.

Configure Alias on Windows for Kubectl

I was getting a bit tired of typing the kubectl command everytime. To solve this and only type k instead of kubectl, it’s possible to add an alias to Windows.

Configure Https / TLS / SSL on Kubernetes with Kube-Lego hosted on Azure Container Service

What if you can configure your infrastucture with a process that requests your SSL Certificates automatic. Not only this, but this process registeres the certificates in your infrastructure also. There is more. The process also requests new versions of certificates every 30 days so the certificate will not expire. All of this, complely automated. It’s even completely free! You or your traditional ops department won’t believe this is possible.

Enter the new world of infrastructure: Kube-Lego, ofcourse hosted on Kubernetes.
Now I hear you think: “This is to good to be true. It must be hard to configure”. The configuration is really easy actually, as you will see in this blogpost.

Configure Ingress on Kubernetes using Azure Container Service

In my blogpost about running a .NET Core 2 application in Kubernetes which can be found here, I’m creating a Service to expose the .NET Core 2 Webapi, so the service gets a public IP address. The configuration looks like this:

Automate the deployment of .NET Core 2 Docker containers to Kubernetes with Azure Container Service and Azure Container Registry using VSTS

Previous blogpost coveres all steps to create a Docker Image from a .NET Core 2 WebAPI application on your local machine. After that, the Docker Image was pushed to Azure Container Registry (ACR). The deployment to Kubernetes pulled this Docker Image from ACR and runs a number of instances. All steps were executed manually. Let’s automate this using VSTS.

Run .NET Core 2 Docker images in Kubernetes using Azure Container Service and Azure Container Registry

This blogpost shows you the bare minimal steps to run .NET Core 2 Docker images in Kubernetes. Kubernetes is hosted in Azure with Azure Container Service and we are using Azure Container Registry as our private Docker Hub.

SSH keys on Windows for Kubernetes with Azure Container Service (ACS)

I’m on Windows and want to connect to my Kubernetes Linux cluster provisioned with Azure Container Service. I want to connect in the command prompt so I can use Kubectl and I want to connect with PuTTY also. Besides this I also want to know which keys to use when provisioning the ACS Kubernetes cluster in the Azure Portal and also which key to use when provisioning with ARM templates.