Quickstart: Use Azure App Configuration in Azure Kubernetes Service (preview)

Article
04/11/2023

In Kubernetes, you set up pods to consume configuration from ConfigMaps. It lets you decouple configuration from your container images, making your applications easily portable. Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider can construct ConfigMaps and Secrets from your key-values and Key Vault references in Azure App Configuration. It enables you to take advantage of Azure App Configuration for the centralized storage and management of your configuration without any changes to your application code.

In this quickstart, you incorporate Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider in an Azure Kubernetes Service workload where you run a simple ASP.NET Core app consuming configuration from environment variables.

Prerequisites

An App Configuration store. Create a store.
An Azure Container Registry. Create a registry.
An Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster that is granted permission to pull images from your Azure Container Registry. Create an AKS cluster.
.NET Core SDK
Azure CLI
Docker Desktop
helm
kubectl

Tip

The Azure Cloud Shell is a free, interactive shell that you can use to run the command line instructions in this article. It has common Azure tools preinstalled, including the .NET Core SDK. If you're logged in to your Azure subscription, launch your Azure Cloud Shell from shell.azure.com. You can learn more about Azure Cloud Shell by reading our documentation

Create an application running in AKS

In this section, you will create a simple ASP.NET Core web application running in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The application reads configuration from the environment variables defined in a Kubernetes deployment. In the next section, you will enable it to consume configuration from Azure App Configuration without changing the application code. If you already have an AKS application that reads configuration from environment variables, you can skip this section and go to Use App Configuration Kubernetes Provider.

Create an application

Use the .NET Core command-line interface (CLI) and run the following command to create a new ASP.NET Core web app project in a new MyWebApp directory:
```
dotnet new webapp --output MyWebApp --framework net6.0
```

Open Index.cshtml in the Pages directory, and update the content with the following code.

@page
@model IndexModel
@using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration
@inject IConfiguration Configuration
@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home page";
}

<style>
    h1 {
        color: @Configuration["Settings:FontColor"];
    }
</style>

<div class="text-center">
    <h1>@Configuration["Settings:Message"]</h1>
</div>

Containerize the application

Run the dotnet publish command to build the app in release mode and create the assets in the published folder.
```
dotnet publish -c Release -o published
```
Create a file named Dockerfile at the root of your project directory, open it in a text editor, and enter the following content. A Dockerfile is a text file that doesn't have an extension and that is used to create a container image.
```
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:6.0 AS runtime
WORKDIR /app
COPY published/ ./
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyWebApp.dll"]
```
Build a container image named aspnetapp by running the following command.
```
docker build --tag aspnetapp .
```

Push the image to Azure Container Registry

Run the az acr login command to login your container registry. The following example logs into a registry named myregistry. Replace the registry name with yours.
```
az acr login --name myregistry
```
The command returns Login Succeeded once login is successful.
Use docker tag to create a tag myregistry.azurecr.io/aspnetapp:v1 for the image aspnetapp.
```
docker tag aspnetapp myregistry.azurecr.io/aspnetapp:v1
```
Tip

To review the list of your existing docker images and tags, run docker image ls. In this scenario, you should see at least two images: aspnetapp and myregistry.azurecr.io/aspnetapp.
Use docker push to upload the image to the container registry. For example, the following command pushes the image to a repository named aspnetapp with tag v1 under the registry myregistry.
```
docker push myregistry.azurecr.io/aspnetapp:v1
```

Deploy the application

Create a Deployment directory in the root directory of your project.

Add a deployment.yaml file to the Deployment directory with the following content to create a deployment. Replace the value of template.spec.containers.image with the image you created in the previous step.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: aspnetapp-demo
  labels:
    app: aspnetapp-demo
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: aspnetapp-demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: aspnetapp-demo
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: aspnetapp
        image: myregistry.azurecr.io/aspnetapp:v1
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        env:
        - name: Settings__Message
          value: "Message from the local configuration"
        - name: Settings__FontColor
          value: "Black"

Add a service.yaml file to the Deployment directory with the following content to create a LoadBalancer service.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: aspnetapp-demo-service
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  - port: 80
  selector:
    app: aspnetapp-demo

Run the following command to deploy the application to the AKS cluster.

kubectl create namespace appconfig-demo
kubectl apply -f ./Deployment -n appconfig-demo

Run the following command and get the External IP address exposed by the LoadBalancer service.
```
kubectl get service configmap-demo-service -n appconfig-demo
```
Open a browser window, and navigate to the IP address obtained in the previous step. The web page looks like this:

Use App Configuration Kubernetes Provider

Now that you have an application running in AKS, you'll deploy the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider to your AKS cluster running as a Kubernetes controller. The provider retrieves data from your App Configuration store and creates a ConfigMap, which is consumable as environment variables by your application.

Setup the Azure App Configuration store

Add following key-values to the App Configuration store and leave Label and Content Type with their default values. For more information about how to add key-values to a store using the Azure portal or the CLI, go to Create a key-value.

Key Value

Settings__FontColor Green

Settings__Message Hello from Azure App Configuration
Enabling the system-assigned managed identity on the Virtual Machine Scale Sets of your AKS cluster. This allows the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider to use the managed identity to connect to your App Configuration store.
Grant read access to your App Configuration store by assigning the managed identity the App Configuration Data Reader role.

Key	Value
Settings__FontColor	Green
Settings__Message	Hello from Azure App Configuration

Install App Configuration Kubernetes Provider to AKS cluster

Run the following command to get access credentials for your AKS cluster. Replace the value of the name and resource-group parameters with your AKS instance:
```
az aks get-credentials --name <your-aks-instance-name> --resource-group <your-aks-resource-group>
```

Install Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider to your AKS cluster using helm:

helm install azureappconfiguration.kubernetesprovider \
     oci://mcr.microsoft.com/azure-app-configuration/helmchart/kubernetes-provider \
     --version 1.0.0-preview4 \
     --namespace azappconfig-system \
     --create-namespace

Add an appConfigurationProvider.yaml file to the Deployment directory with the following content to create an AzureAppConfigurationProvider resource. AzureAppConfigurationProvider is a custom resource that defines what data to download from an Azure App Configuration store and creates a ConfigMap.

Replace the value of the endpoint field with the endpoint of your Azure App Configuration store.
```
apiVersion: azconfig.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureAppConfigurationProvider
metadata:
  name: appconfigurationprovider-sample
spec:
  endpoint: <your-app-configuration-store-endpoint>
  target:
    configMapName: configmap-created-by-appconfig-provider
```
Note

AzureAppConfigurationProvider is a declarative API object. It defines the desired state of the ConfigMap created from the data in your App Configuration store with the following behavior:
- The ConfigMap will fail to be created if a ConfigMap with the same name already exists in the same namespace.
- The ConfigMap will be reset based on the present data in your App Configuration store if it's deleted or modified by any other means.
- The ConfigMap will be deleted if the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider is uninstalled.

Update the deployment.yaml file in the Deployment directory to use the ConfigMap configmap-created-by-appconfig-provider for environment variables.

Replace the env section

env:
- name: Settings__Message
  value: "Message from the local configuration"
- name: Settings__FontColor
  value: "Black"

with

envFrom:
- configMapRef:
    name: configmap-created-by-appconfig-provider

Run the following command to deploy the changes. Replace the namespace if you are using your existing AKS application.
```
kubectl apply -f ./Deployment -n appconfig-demo
```
Refresh the browser. The page shows updated content.

Troubleshooting

If you don't see your application picking up the data from your App Configuration store, run the following command to validate that the ConfigMap is created properly.

kubectl get configmap configmap-created-by-appconfig-provider -n appconfig-demo

If the ConfigMap is not created, run the following command to get the data retrieval status.

kubectl get AzureAppConfigurationProvider appconfigurationprovider-sample -n appconfig-demo -o yaml

If the Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider retrieved data from your App Configuration store successfully, the phase property under the status section of the output should be COMPLETE, as shown in the following example.

$ kubectl get AzureAppConfigurationProvider appconfigurationprovider-sample -n appconfig-demo -o yaml

apiVersion: azconfig.io/v1beta1
kind: AzureAppConfigurationProvider
  ... ... ...
status:
  lastReconcileTime: "2023-04-06T06:17:06Z"
  lastSyncTime: "2023-04-06T06:17:06Z"
  message: Complete sync settings to ConfigMap or Secret
  phase: COMPLETE

If the phase is not COMPLETE, the data isn't downloaded from your App Configuration store properly. Run the following command to show the logs of the Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider.

kubectl logs deployment/az-appconfig-k8s-provider -n azappconfig-system

Use the logs for further troubleshooting. For example, if you see requests to your App Configuration store are responded with RESPONSE 403: 403 Forbidden, it may indicate the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider doesn't have the necessary permission to access your App Configuration store. Follow the instructions in Setup the Azure App Configuration store to ensure the managed identity is enabled and it's assigned the proper permission.

Clean up resources

Uninstall the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider from your AKS cluster if you want to keep the AKS cluster.

helm uninstall azureappconfiguration.kubernetesprovider --namespace azappconfig-system

If you don't want to continue using the resources created in this article, delete the resource group you created here to avoid charges.

Important

Deleting a resource group is irreversible. The resource group and all the resources in it are permanently deleted. Ensure that you don't accidentally delete the wrong resource group or resources. If you created the resources for this article inside a resource group that contains other resources you want to keep, delete each resource individually from its respective pane instead of deleting the resource group.

Sign in to the Azure portal, and select Resource groups.
In the Filter by name box, enter the name of your resource group.
In the result list, select the resource group name to see an overview.
Select Delete resource group.
You're asked to confirm the deletion of the resource group. Enter the name of your resource group to confirm, and select Delete.

After a few moments, the resource group and all its resources are deleted.

Next steps

In this quickstart, you:

Created an application running in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Connected your AKS cluster to your App Configuration store using the App Configuration Kubernetes Provider.
Created a ConfigMap with data from your App Configuration store.
Ran the application with configuration from your App Configuration store without changing your application code.

To learn more about the Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider, see Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider reference.