DevOps Classroom notes 04/Jul/2026

Kubernetes as a Service

• Cloud providers like AWS, Azure and GCP offer k8s as a service.
• K8s as a service means
  • control plane will be managed by cloud provider and depending on your pricing plan this might me single node or multi node. you cannot ssh into control plane. To deal with control plane use kubectl or cloud provider web interface.
  • nodes:
    • Node as VM: In this case we select number of vms and this node will be added to control plane. for grouping they would give the option of node group. They also give option to autoscale nodes on demand (cluster autoscaling).
    • Serverless or pay per pod.
• AWS offer k8s as a service => Elastic Kubernetes Services
• Azure => Azure Kuberntes services
• GCP => Google Kuberentes Engine.
• Cluster creation options
  • Console/portal
  • CLI
  • Terraform

Lets create an AKS Cluster (Free control plane) using azure cli

• AKS creation Refer Here
• Open Azure cli

export RESOURCE_GROUP="myAKSResourceGroup"
export CLUSTER_NAME="myAKSCluster"
export USER_NP='userpool1'
export LOCATION="eastus"
az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --location $LOCATION
az aks create --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --node-count 1 --generate-ssh-keys

az aks nodepool add --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --cluster-name $CLUSTER_NAME --name $USER_NP --node-count 1 --mode User

az aks nodepool list --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --cluster-name $CLUSTER_NAME --query "[].{Count:count, Mode:mode, NodePool:name, ResourceGroup:resourceGroup}"

• Open git bash connect to the cluster

export RESOURCE_GROUP="myAKSResourceGroup"
export CLUSTER_NAME="myAKSCluster"
export USER_NP='userpool1'
export LOCATION="eastus"
az aks get-credentials --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME

• Deleting the k8s cluster

az group delete --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --no-wait --yes

Creating the AKS cluster using terraform

• install terraform

winget install -e --id Hashicorp.Terraform

• Create a new folder called as aks-terrform
• create a file called as main.tf with the following content

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.5.0"

  required_providers {
    azurerm = {
      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
      version = "~> 4.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

#############################
# Variables
#############################

variable "resource_group_name" {
  default = "myAKSResourceGroup"
}

variable "cluster_name" {
  default = "myAKSCluster"
}

variable "location" {
  default = "eastus"
}

variable "user_nodepool_name" {
  default = "userpool1"
}

#############################
# Resource Group
#############################

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "aks" {
  name     = var.resource_group_name
  location = var.location
}

#############################
# AKS Cluster
#############################

resource "azurerm_kubernetes_cluster" "aks" {
  name                = var.cluster_name
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.aks.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.aks.name

  dns_prefix = "${var.cluster_name}-dns"

  sku_tier = "Free"

  default_node_pool {
    name       = var.user_nodepool_name
    node_count = 1
    vm_size    = "Standard_DS2_v2"
  }

  identity {
    type = "SystemAssigned"
  }

  network_profile {
    network_plugin    = "azure"
    load_balancer_sku = "standard"
  }

  tags = {
    Environment = "Demo"
  }
}

#############################
# Get AKS Credentials
#############################

resource "null_resource" "get_credentials" {

  depends_on = [
    azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks
  ]

  provisioner "local-exec" {
    command = <<EOT
az aks get-credentials \
  --resource-group ${azurerm_resource_group.aks.name} \
  --name ${azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.name} \
  --overwrite-existing
EOT
  }

  triggers = {
    cluster_id = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.aks.id
  }
}

• Now execute

# cd into folder with main.tf
terraform init
terraform apply -auto-approve

• Once terraform is done

kubectl get nodes

• To delete the cluster

terraform destroy