AKS networking (kubenet, Azure CNI) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

AKS Networking Setup with Kubenet and Azure CNI

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a Kubernetes cluster on Azure using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). You want to understand how to configure the networking options: kubenet and Azure CNI. These networking options control how pods get IP addresses and communicate inside and outside the cluster.Imagine you are a cloud engineer preparing the cluster configuration files to deploy AKS with these networking options.

🎯 Goal: Build two AKS cluster configuration snippets: one using kubenet networking and one using Azure CNI networking. You will create the base cluster configuration, add a networking configuration variable, apply the networking type, and finalize the cluster setup with network plugin settings.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a base AKS cluster configuration dictionary with required fields

Add a variable to select the networking plugin type

Apply the networking plugin type to the cluster configuration

Complete the cluster configuration with network plugin specific settings

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

AKS clusters require proper network configuration to ensure pods can communicate and access resources securely and efficiently. Understanding kubenet and Azure CNI helps in choosing the right setup for your applications.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals often configure AKS clusters. Knowing how to set networking options is essential for deploying scalable and secure Kubernetes environments on Azure.

1

Create base AKS cluster configuration

Create a dictionary called aks_cluster with these exact keys and values: 'name': 'myAKSCluster', 'location': 'eastus', 'resource_group': 'myResourceGroup', and 'node_count': 3.

Azure

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python dictionary with the exact keys and values given.

2

Add networking plugin variable

Create a variable called network_plugin and set it to the string 'kubenet'.

Azure

aks_cluster = {
    'name': 'myAKSCluster',
    'location': 'eastus',
    'resource_group': 'myResourceGroup',
    'node_count': 3
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'kubenet' to the variable named network_plugin.

3

Apply networking plugin to cluster configuration

Add a key 'network_profile' to the aks_cluster dictionary. Set its value to another dictionary with the key 'network_plugin' and the value from the variable network_plugin.

Azure

aks_cluster = {
    'name': 'myAKSCluster',
    'location': 'eastus',
    'resource_group': 'myResourceGroup',
    'node_count': 3
}

network_plugin = 'kubenet'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use dictionary assignment to add the network profile with the plugin value.

4

Complete cluster configuration with network plugin settings

If the network_plugin is 'kubenet', add the key 'service_cidr' with value '10.0.0.0/16' and 'dns_service_ip' with value '10.0.0.10' inside the network_profile dictionary. If it is 'azure', add the key 'pod_cidr' with value '10.244.0.0/16' inside network_profile. For this project, just add the kubenet settings.

Azure

aks_cluster = {
    'name': 'myAKSCluster',
    'location': 'eastus',
    'resource_group': 'myResourceGroup',
    'node_count': 3
}

network_plugin = 'kubenet'

aks_cluster['network_profile'] = {'network_plugin': network_plugin}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an if statement to add the correct keys and values inside the network_profile dictionary.