Microsoft's Azure Container Service (AKS) manages your hosted Kubernetes environment, making it quick and easy to deploy and manage containerized applications without container orchestration expertise. It also eliminates the burden of ongoing operations and maintenance by provisioning, upgrading, and scaling resources on demand, without taking your applications offline. For more information, see the AKS documentation.
Follow this step-by-step guide to set up a Nuclio development environment that uses Azure Container Service (AKS).
- Prerequisites
- Set up your AKS cluster
- Create a container registry using the Azure CLI
- Grant Kubernetes and Nuclio access to the ACR
- Install Nuclio
- Deploy a function with the Nuclio dashboard
- What's next
Before setting up a Nuclio ACR environment, ensure that the following prerequisites are met:
- You have an Azure account. If you don't have an account, you can create one for free.
- The Azure CLI,
az, is installed. See the Azure CLI installation guide.
Create a resource group by running the following az command (see the Azure CLI documentation):
az group create --name <resource-group-name> --location <location>The following example creates a resource group named "my-nuclio-k8s-rg" that is located in western Europe (location "westeurope"):
az group create --name my-nuclio-k8s-rg --location westeuropeCreate a Kubernetes cluster by running the following az command (see the Azure CLI documentation):
az aks create --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <cluster-name> --node-count <number>The following example creates a cluster named "myNuclioCluster" in the "my-nuclio-k8s-rg" resource group that was created in the example in the previous step:
az aks create --resource-group my-nuclio-k8s-rg --name myNuclioCluster --node-count 2 --generate-ssh-keysAfter several minutes, the deployment completes and returns information about the AKS deployment, in JSON format.
Install the kubectl CLI, unless you already have it installed (in which case you can skip to the next step). The kubectl Kubernetes command-line application enables you to connect to the Kubernetes cluster from your client computer. To install kubectl locally, run the following az command (see the Azure CLI documentation):
az aks install-cliConnect to the cluster with kubectl by running the following az command, which configures the kubectl CLI to connect to your Kubernetes cluster (see the Azure CLI documentation):
az aks get-credentials --resource-group=<resource-group-name> --name=<cluster-name>For example, the following command gets the credentials of a cluster named "myNuclioCluster" in the "my-nuclio-k8s-rg" resource group that was created in the examples in the previous steps:
az aks get-credentials --resource-group=my-nuclio-k8s-rg --name=myNuclioClusterVerify the connection to your cluster by running the following kubectl command (see the Kubernetes documentation):
kubectl get nodesThe output is expected to resemble the following example:
NAME STATUS AGE VERSION
k8s-myNuclioCluster-36346190-0 Ready 49m v1.7.7Azure Container Registry (ACR) is a managed Docker container registry service that's used for storing private Docker container images. For more information, see the ACR documentation.
Microsoft's Create a container registry using the Azure CLI guide explains how to use the az CLI to create a container registry.
The Nuclio dashboard builds and pushes functions to a Docker registry. For the Nuclio ACR setup, ACR serves as the Docker registry. Create an ACR instance by using the az acr create command (see the Azure CLI documentation):
Note: The name of the registry (
<registry-name>) must be unique.
az acr create --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <registry-name> --sku BasicThe following example creates a registry named "mynuclioacr" in the "my-nuclio-k8s-rg" resource group:
az acr create --resource-group my-nuclio-k8s-rg --sku Basic --name mynuclioacrTo grant the AKS Kubernetes cluster and the Nuclio dashboard access to the Azure Container Registry (ACR), as part of the Nuclio installation you'll need to create a secret that stores the registry credentials. You can select between the following two methods for authenticating with the ACR:
Note: The admin-account method has some security concerns, including no option to assign roles. Therefore, it's considered better practice to create a service principal.
You can assign a service principal to your registry, and use it from your application or service to implement headless authentication.
You can use the following command to create a service principal:
az ad sp create-for-rbac --scopes /subscriptions/<subscription-id>/resourcegroups/<resource-group-name>/providers/Microsoft.ContainerRegistry/registries/<registry-name> --role Contributor --name <service-prinicpal-name>For example, the following command creates a service principal for a container registry named "mynuclioacr" in the "my-nuclio-k8s-rg" resource group:
az ad sp create-for-rbac --role Contributor --scopes /subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)/resourcegroups/my-nuclio-k8s-rg/providers/Microsoft.ContainerRegistry/registries/mynuclioacr --name mynuclioacr-spMake a note of the username (the service principal's clientID) and the password, as you'll need them when you install Nuclio.
Each container registry includes an admin user account, which is disabled by default. You can enable the admin user and manage its credentials in the Azure portal or by using the Azure CLI.
At this stage you should have a functioning Kubernetes cluster, a Docker registry, and a working Kubernetes CLI (kubectl), and you can proceed to install the Nuclio services on the cluster (i.e., deploy Nuclio).
Create a Nuclio namespace by running the following command:
Note: All Nuclio resources go into the "nuclio" namespace, and role-based access control (RBAC) is configured accordingly.
kubectl create namespace nuclioCreate a secret for authenticating Kubernetes and Nuclio with the ACR:
read -s mypassword
<enter your password>
kubectl create secret docker-registry registry-credentials --namespace nuclio \
--docker-username <username> \
--docker-password $mypassword \
--docker-server <registry-name>.azurecr.io \
--docker-email [email protected]
unset mypasswordCreate the RBAC roles that are required for using Nuclio:
Note: You are encouraged to look at the nuclio-rbac.yaml file that's used in the following command before applying it, so that you don't get into the habit of blindly running things on your cluster (akin to running scripts off the internet as root).
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuclio/nuclio/master/hack/k8s/resources/nuclio-rbac.yamlDeploy Nuclio to the cluster: the following command deploys the Nuclio controller and dashboard and the Træfik ingress controller, among other resources:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuclio/nuclio/master/hack/aks/resources/nuclio.yamlUse the command kubectl get pods --namespace nuclio to verify both the controller and dashboard are running.
Forward the Nuclio dashboard port: the Nuclio dashboard publishes a service at port 8070. To use the dashboard, you first need to forward this port to your local IP address:
kubectl port-forward -n nuclio $(kubectl get pods -n nuclio -l nuclio.io/app=dashboard -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 8070:8070Forward the Træfik port: to use Træfik as an ingress, you'll need to forward its port as well:
kubectl port-forward -n kube-system $(kubectl get pod -n kube-system -l k8s-app=traefik-ingress-lb -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 8080:80Browse to http://localhost:8070 (after having forwarded this port as part of the Nuclio installation). You should see the Nuclio dashboard UI. Choose one of the built-in examples and click Deploy. The first build will populate the local Docker cache with base images and other files, so it might take a while, depending on your network. When the function deployment is completed, you can click Invoke to invoke the function with a body.
See the following resources to make the best of your new Nuclio environment: