Azure Kubernetes
Plan and deploy production-ready AKS clusters, focusing on critical Day-0 decisions (hard to change later) versus Day-1 features (configurable post-creation).
Initial Assessment
Gather requirements around:
- Environment type (dev/test vs. production)
- Target region
- Expected scale
- Networking requirements
- Security posture
- Observability needs
SKU Selection
Default to AKS Automatic for most workloads unless specific customization needs justify Standard SKU's additional management overhead.
| SKU | When to Use |
|---|---|
| AKS Automatic | Most workloads — managed node provisioning, auto-scaling, sane defaults |
| AKS Standard | Advanced networking, custom node configs, specific compliance requirements |
Day-0 Decisions (Networking)
These are hard or impossible to change after cluster creation:
| Component | Recommendation | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Pod IP model | Azure CNI Overlay | Recommended for most cases; avoids IP exhaustion |
| Dataplane | Azure CNI with Cilium | eBPF-based performance |
| Ingress | App Routing with Gateway API | Default standard |
| DNS | LocalDNS on all node pools | Performance improvement |
Security Framework
- Authentication: Microsoft Entra ID for all cluster authentication
- Secrets: Azure Key Vault via Secrets Store CSI Driver
- Policy: Azure Policy with Deployment Safeguards enabled
- Images: Signed image policies via Azure Policy and Ratify
Observability Stack
| Component | Service |
|---|---|
| Metrics | Managed Prometheus |
| Logs | Container Insights |
| Dashboards | Grafana |
Reliability & Scale
- Deploy across 3 Availability Zones for HA
- Use Standard tier for 99.95% SLA
- Enable Ephemeral OS disks and Azure Linux for performance
- Use Node Auto Provisioning (NAP) for cost-efficient scaling
Cost Controls
- Spot node pools for batch workloads (up to 90% savings)
- Stop/start for dev/test clusters during off-hours
MCP Tools & CLI Fallback
The skill uses MCP tools to discover available AKS functionality and falls back to Azure CLI when needed. It never exposes secrets or subscription identifiers in output.
Installation
npx skills add https://github.com/microsoft/azure-skills --skill azure-kubernetes
Mirrored from https://github.com/microsoft/azure-skills — original author: microsoft, license: MIT. This is an unclaimed mirror. Content and ownership transfer to the author when they claim this account.