AKS Flux Extension ImageUpdateAutomation support

Question

Hi

Flux has a feature to automatically watch for Docker image version changes in Docker Container Registry and update GitOps git repository.

The feature is described in Flux official documentation:
https://fluxcd.io/docs/guides/image-update/

The feature requires Flux to bootstrap image-reflector-controller and image-automation-controller Pods in Kubernetes Cluster to work and Kubernetes Custom Resources (CRD) to enable the functionality.

After provisioning Flux with Azure Kubernetes Extension Manager we can see that CRDs (ImageUpdateAutomation, ImageRepository and ImagePolicy) are setup in the AKS cluster, but
image-reflector-controller and image-automation-controller are not.

From what we understand in some older Flux version to enable the functionality a special component-extra flag must be set in order to provision the controllers during flux bootstrap phase.

--components-extra=image-reflector-controller,image-automation-controller

Sadly in the official ARM/Bicep fluxConfigurations resource, which does flux bootstrap under the hood, we haven't found an option to pass the components-extra to enable the feature.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/templates/microsoft.kubernetesconfiguration/2022-03-01/fluxconfigurations?tabs=bicep#gitrepositorydefinition

Could you please suggest how/if possible could we enabled ImageUpdateAutomation and if/when the setup would be officially documented in Azure GitOps Documentation?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-arc/kubernetes/tutorial-use-gitops-flux2#for-azure-kubernetes-service-clusters

Thank you in advance,
Best regards

Answer 1

Found the solution thanks to Bernardo Pinheiro,

It is possible to enabled image-automation-controller in Azure Flux, as described here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-arc/kubernetes/tutorial-use-gitops-flux2#control-which-controllers-are-deployed-with-the-flux-cluster-extension

To do that in Bicep one need to do the following:

resource fluxExtensions 'Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration/extensions@2022-03-01' = {  
  name: 'flux'  
  scope: aks  
  properties: {  
    extensionType: 'microsoft.flux'  
    scope: {  
      cluster: {  
        releaseNamespace: 'flux-system'  
      }  
    }  
    configurationSettings: {  
      'image-automation-controller.enabled': 'true'   
      'image-reflector-controller.enabled': 'true'  
    }  
    autoUpgradeMinorVersion: true  
    version: '1.3.0'  
  }  
}  

This configuration of Flux must be done on Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration/extensions level instead of Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration/fluxConfigurations