Resolve errors when enabling or disabling Azure Arc on your AKS workload clusters in AKS enabled by Arc

Applies to: AKS on Azure Stack HCI, AKS on Windows Server

This article describes errors you may encounter (and their workarounds) while connecting or disconnecting your AKS workload clusters to Azure Arc using the PowerShell cmdlets Enable-AksHciArcConnection and Disable-AksHciArcConnection in AKS Arc. For issues that are not covered in this article, see Troubleshooting Arc enabled Kubernetes.

You can also open a support issue if none of the workarounds listed below apply to you.

Error: "A workload cluster with the name 'my-aks-cluster' was not found"

This error means that you have not created the workload cluster, or you have incorrectly spelled the name of the workload cluster.

Run Get-AksHciCluster to ensure you have the correct name or that the cluster you want to connect to Arc exists.

Error: "System.Management.Automation.RemoteException Starting onboarding process Cluster "azure-arc-onboarding" set..."

The following error may occur when you use Windows Admin Center to create a workload cluster and connect it to Arc-enabled Kubernetes:

System.Management.Automation.RemoteException Starting onboarding process Cluster "azure-arc-onboarding" set. User "azure-arc-onboarding" set. Context "azure-arc-onboarding" created. Switched to context "azure-arc-onboarding". Azure login az login: error: argument --password/-p: expected one argument usage: az login [-h] [--verbose] [--debug] [--only-show-errors] [--output {json,jsonc,yaml,yamlc,table,tsv,none}] [--query JMESPATH] [--username USERNAME] [--password PASSWORD] [--service-principal] [--tenant TENANT] [--allow-no-subscriptions] [-i] [--use-device-code] [--use-cert-sn-issuer] : Job Failed Condition]

To resolve this issue, review the options below:

  • Option 1: Delete the workload cluster and try again using Windows Admin Center.
  • Option 2: In PowerShell, check if the cluster has been successfully created by running the Get-AksHciCluster command, and then use Enable-AksHciArcConnection to connect your cluster to Arc.

Enable-AksHciArcConnection fails if Connect-AzAccount is used to sign in to Azure

When you use Connect-AzAccount to sign in to Azure, you might set a different subscription as your default context than the one that you gave as an input to Set-AksHciRegistration. When you then run Enable-AksHciArcConnection, the command expects the subscription used in Set-AksHciRegistration. However, Enable-AksHciArcConnection gets the default subscription set using the Connect-AzAccount, and therefore, might cause an error.

To prevent this error, follow one of the options below:

  • Option 1: Run Set-AksHciRegistration to log in to Azure with the same parameters (subscription and resource group) you used when you first ran the command to connect your AKS host to Azure for billing. You can then use Enable-AksHciArcConnection -Name <ClusterName> with default values, and your cluster will be connected to Arc under the AKS host billing subscription and resource group.

  • Option 2: Run Enable-AksHciArcRegistration with all parameters, subscription, resource group, location, tenant, and secret, to connect your cluster to Azure Arc under a different subscription and resource group than the AKS host. You should also run Enable-AksHciArcRegistration if you do not have enough permissions to connect your cluster to Azure Arc using your Azure Account (for example, if you are not the subscription owner).

Error: 'Timed out waiting for the condition'

This error usually points to one of the following issues:

  • The clusters were created in an Azure VM in a virtualized environment, or you were deploying AKS on Azure Stack HCI on multiple levels of virtualization.
  • A slow internet caused the timeout.

If one of the above scenarios applies to you, run Disable-AksHciArcConnection, and try connecting again. If the above scenario doesn't apply to you, open a support issue for AKS on Azure Stack HCI.

Error: "Secrets "sh.helm.release.v1.azure-arc.v1" not found"

This error indicates that your Kubernetes API server could not be reached.

Try running the Disable-AksHciArcConnection command again, and then go to the Azure portal to confirm that your connectedCluster resource has actually been deleted. You can also run kubectl get ns -A to confirm that the namespace, azure-arc, does not exist on your cluster.

Error: 'Error while updating agents for enabling features'

If you enable the custom location and cluster connect features on an AKS cluster that is connected to Azure Arc, you may see the following error:

Error while updating agents for enabling features. Please run "kubectl get pods -n azure-arc" to check the pods in case of timeout error. Error: Error: UPGRADE FAILED: timed out waiting for the condition

This is a known issue with the September release and is fixed in the October release. New AKS clusters created using the October release and connected to Arc using Enable-AksHciArcConnection do not experience this issue. Update your AKS Arc deployment to the October release and then reconnect your existing clusters to Arc for a workaround to this issue.

Error: 'Connection to Azure failed. Please run 'Set-AksHciRegistration' and try again'

This error means that your login credentials to Azure have expired.

Use Set-AksHciRegistration to log in to Azure before running the Enable-AksHciArcConnection command again. When rerunning Set-AksHciRegistration, make sure you use the same subscription and resource group details you used when you first registered the AKS host to Azure for billing. If you rerun the command with a different subscription or resource group, they will not be registered. Once the subscription and resource group are set in Set-AksHciRegistration, they cannot be changed without uninstalling AKS Arc.

Error: ''My-Cluster' is not a valid cluster name. Names must be lowercase and match the regular expression pattern: '^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$''

This error indicates that the workload cluster does not follow the Kubernetes naming convention.

As the error suggests, make sure the cluster name is lowercase and matches the regular expression pattern: '^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$'.

Error: 'addons.msft.microsoft "demo-arc-onboarding" already exists'

This error usually means that you have already connected your AKS cluster to Arc-enabled Kubernetes. To confirm it's connected, go to the Azure portal and check under the subscription and resource group you provided when running Set-AksHciRegistration (if you've used default values) or Enable-AksHciArcConnection (if you haven't used default values). You can also confirm if your AKS on Azure Stack HCI cluster is connected to Azure by running the az connectedk8s show Azure CLI command. If you do not see your workload cluster, run Disable-AksHciArcConnection and try again.

Error: 'autorest/azure: Service returned an error. Status=404 Code="ResourceNotFound"...'

The error below means that Azure could not find the connectedCluster ARM resource associated with your cluster:

autorest/azure: Service returned an error. Status=404 Code="ResourceNotFound" Message="The Resource 'Microsoft.Kubernetes/connectedClusters/my-workload-cluster' under resource group 'AKS-HCI2' was not found. For more details please go to https://aka.ms/ARMResourceNotFoundFix"]

You may encounter this error if:

  • You supplied an incorrect resource group or subscription while running the Disable-AksHciArcConnection cmdlet.
  • You manually deleted the resource on the Azure portal.
  • ARM cannot find your Azure resource.

To resolve this error, as indicated in the error message, see resolve resource not found errors.

Error: 'Cluster addons arc uninstall Error: namespaces "azure-arc" not found'

This error usually means that you have already uninstalled Arc agents from your workload cluster, or you have manually deleted the azure-arc namespace using the kubectl command.

Go to the Azure portal to confirm that you do not have any leaked resources. For example, verify that you do not see a connectedCluster resource in the subscription and resource group.

Error: 'Azure subscription is not properly configured'

You may encounter this issue if you have not configured your Azure subscription with the Arc-enabled Kubernetes resource providers. We currently check that Microsoft.Kubernetes and Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration are configured.

For more information about enabling these resource providers, see Register providers for Arc-enabled Kubernetes.