Provisioning

Provisioning AKS Clusters

AKS Clusters are standard Azure Resources that can be deployed in several different ways:

  • Azure Portal
  • Azure CLI or PowerShell
  • Infrastructure as Code (Bicep, Terraform)
  • REST API

Whilst the portal and CLI may be suitable for quick, non-production deployments, we recommend using Infrastructure as Code to automate your production deployments in a repeatable, controlled and audited manner.

You can find example deployments on Microsoft Learn:

When provisioning an AKS cluster, there are several additional resources that need to either be created with the cluster, or already exist. These include:

  • Resource Group
  • Virtual Network and Subnets
  • Network Security Groups
  • Managed Identities
  • Log Analytics Workspace (for monitoring)

The default deployment configuration, which is used in many of the examples above, automatically provisions several of the required resources when you create the cluster. However, if you prefer to deploy these resources yourself to ensure they are configured to meet your specific requirements, such as security, governance, or naming standards, you will need to create them before deploying AKS. When you proceed with the AKS deployment, you must provide the details of these resources to the commands or Infrastructure as Code templates you are using.