Is it mandatory to have Standard Sku load balancer with AKS Virtual machine scale set?

Question

Team,

Currently, I have availability set node pool in Azure kubernetes v1.23.5 with Kubernetes internal basic SKU load balancer. If we have to migrate to virtual machine scale set then is it mandatory to have a Standard SKU load balancer. Can we use basic with VMSS otherwise, it will take lot of time to migrate everything.

If yes, then I have few important questions. Would be grateful if someone can answer all of them:

1. What is the procedure of migrating to Kubernetes internal Standard SKU load balancer and what things should need attention from networking perspective while migrating
2. Do we have to run any commands as well to integrate Standard Sku LB with VMSS.. Or, adding the node pool and upgrading to load balancer are 2 different categories and complete connectivity integration will happen automatically/internally. 3. As per this comparison basic load balancer also supports virtual machine scale sets. Does this mean that Standard sku is not mandatory for VMSS. 4. If 3rd point is true, then at the time of migration we would be having 2 different node pools i.e. old one with VMAS and new one with VMSS. Does basic load balancer create any issue in connectivity while draining/deleting the node pool.

Please let me know. Thanks

Kind Regards,
Tanul

Answer 1

Hello @Tanul

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform,

Standard load balancer is not mandatory but recommended as it's secure by default and offer additional functionalities compared to Basic:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/load-balancer-standard

I hope this helps!

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