Kubernetes Cluster is stuck in starting state for more than an hour and node pools are empty.

Question

I tried changing the DNS of the AKS and then tried to stop and start the service again to see if the DNS of the cluster changes . The Cluster stopped in 5 minutes but after that when I tried to start the Kubernetes Cluster it is stuck in starting state and all the node pools are empty . I am not allowed to scale and add nodes to the node pools and I cannot stop the Cluster again . I used the GUI to stop and start the kubernetes service. Please let me know whether
I should wait longer for the service to complete the starting operation or should I delete it and start building a new Kubernetes Service.

Answer 1

Sometimes there can be transient issue between internal AKS components and the work around is to retry STOP and START again.
If that doesn't help, try a resource refresh also as below and start aks again:

az resource update -n <your cluster name> -g <resource group name> --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService --resource-type ManagedClusters  

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Answer 2

I actually found a way to get the kubernetes cluster out of starting phase. I turns out that if you update the configuration of the cluster it gets out of the starting state and starts updating the status . I used the command to enable managed identities and it worked for me.

az aks update -g <RGName> -n <AKSName> --enable-managed-identity