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Helm and Kustomize support

The Azure Developer CLI provides support for Helm and Kustomize to improve the provisioning and deployment process to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Helm and Kustomize are tools that help you configure and manage Kubernetes applications. In the sections ahead, you'll learn how to enable and customize support for these tools in your azd templates.

Enable Helm support

To enable Helm support, make sure you have the Helm CLI installed. Enable the azd helm feature flag by running the azd config command:

azd config set alpha.aks.helm on

Helm configuration and deployment

azd Helm support enables you to define a list of Helm charts to install for each azd service. Use the helm and k8s configuration sections in the azure.yaml file to define a list of helm repositories or releases to install.

name: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks
metadata:
  template: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks@0.0.1-beta
services:
  argocd:
    host: aks
    k8s:
      namespace: argo
      service:
        name: argocd-server
      helm:
        repositories:
          - name: argo
            url: https://argoproj.github.io/argo-helm
        releases:
          - name: argocd
            chart: argo/argo-cd
            version: 5.51.4
  jupyterhub:
    host: aks
    k8s:
      namespace: jupyterhub
      service:
        name: proxy-public
      helm:
        repositories:
          - name: jupyterhub
            url: https://hub.jupyter.org/helm-chart/
        releases:
          - name: jupyterhub
            chart: jupyterhub/jupyterhub
            version: 3.1.0

The azd deploy command handles the following tasks using the helm section:

  • Adds any referenced Helm repositories and/or updates them
  • Installs the referenced Helm charts
  • Waits for Helm release to transition to a deployed state
  • Lists relevant services and ingresses defined within the deployed resources

A screenshot of the Helm deployment output.

Enable Kustomize support

To enable Kustomize support, make sure you have the Kustomize CLI installed. Enable the azd Kustomize feature flag using the azd config command:

azd config set alpha.aks.kustomize on

Kustomize configuration and deployment

The Kustomize feature enables you to use Kustomize as part of Kubernetes deployments and provides the following features:

  • Supports base and variant configurations
  • edits that can be run before deployments
  • configMapGenerator with azd environments

Configure Kustomize features using the following azure.yaml sections:

  • dir: Relative path from the service to your Kustomize directory that contains a kustomization.yaml file.
    • Supports environment variable substitution.
  • edits: Array of edit expression that are applied before deployment
    • Supports environment variable substitution
  • env: Map of key/value pairs generated before deployment
    • Map values support environment variable substitution

Use cases

The following Kustomize use cases are supported by azd.

Deploy k8s manifests

The following configuration performs a kubectl apply -k <dir> command that points to your manifests folder that contains a kustomization.yaml:

# azure.yaml

name: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks
metadata:
  template: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks@0.0.1-beta
services:
  api:
    project: ./src/api
    language: js
    host: aks
    k8s:
      kustomize:
        dir: ./kustomize/base

Use overlays to deploy to with different variants

This use case is typically used to have custom configurations for deploying to different stages or environments, such as dev, test and prod. In the following example, the user can specify the ${AZURE_ENV_NAME} environment variable within the kustomize directory to automatically leverage the azd environments as your default overlay convention:

# azure.yaml

name: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks
metadata:
  template: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks@0.0.1-beta
services:
  api:
    project: ./src/api
    language: js
    host: aks
    k8s:
      kustomize:
        dir: ./kustomize/overlays/${AZURE_ENV_NAME}

Modify kustomization.yaml before deployment

A common use case for modifying the kustomization.yaml is to modify the container image names/versions used as part of your deployment.

The following example specifies an edits configuration and sets any valid kustomize edit ... command. azd automatically interpolates any environment variables referenced within the edit command.

# azure.yaml

name: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks
metadata:
  template: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks@0.0.1-beta
services:
  api:
    project: ./src/api
    language: js
    host: aks
    k8s:
      kustomize:
        dir: ./kustomize/overlays/${AZURE_ENV_NAME}
        edits:
          - set image todo-api=${SERVICE_API_IMAGE_NAME}

Use azd environment variables within config maps

Config maps or secrets are critical in configuring your k8s clusters. Since kustomize does not support any direct environment variable substitution we can leverage the kustomize configMapGenerator with a .env file.

The kustomize configuration section supports a env section where one or many key/value pairs can be defined. This configuration automatically generates a temporary .env file within your kustomization directory that can be used by a configMapGenerator.

The following configuration will create a .env with the specified key/value pairs.

# azure.yaml

name: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks
metadata:
  template: todo-nodejs-mongo-aks@0.0.1-beta
services:
  api:
    project: ./src/api
    language: js
    host: aks
    k8s:
      kustomize:
        dir: ./kustomize/overlays/${AZURE_ENV_NAME}
        edits:
          - set image todo-api=${SERVICE_API_IMAGE_NAME}
        env:
          AZURE_AKS_IDENTITY_CLIENT_ID: ${AZURE_AKS_IDENTITY_CLIENT_ID}
          AZURE_KEY_VAULT_ENDPOINT: ${AZURE_KEY_VAULT_ENDPOINT}
          APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING: ${APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING}

The configMapGenerator generates a k8s config map with the specified name and contains all the key/value pairs referenced within the .env file.

# kustomization.yaml

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization

resources:
  - deployment.yaml
  - service.yaml
  - ingress.yaml

configMapGenerator:
  - name: todo-web-config
    envs:
      - .env
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