The Azure Container Instances Connector for Kubernetes allows Kubernetes clusters to deploy Azure Container Instances.

This enables on-demand and nearly instantaneous container compute, orchestrated by Kubernetes, without having VM infrastructure to manage and while still leveraging the portable Kubernetes API. This will allow you to utilize both VMs and container instances simultaneously in the same Kubernetes cluster, giving you the best of both worlds.

Please note this software is experimental and should not be used for anything resembling a production workload.

The ACI Connector roughly mimics the Kubelet interface by:

• Registering into the Kubernetes data plane as a Node with unlimited capacity
• Dispatching scheduled Pods to Azure Container Instances instead of a VM-based container engine

Once the connector is registered as a node named aci-connector, you can use nodeName: aci-connector in your Pod spec to run the Pod via Azure Container Instances. Pods without this node name will continue to be scheduled normally. See below for instructions on how to use use the ACI Connector with the Kubernetes scheduler via taints and tolerations.

1. A working az command-line client - Install azure cli
2. A Kubernetes cluster with a working kubectl - Set up a Kubernetes cluster on Azure

In addition to the provided examples directory, the following Kubernetes features are currently supported when defined within a Kubernetes Pod manifest. This list is subject to change as we improve the aci-connector.

• Environment Variables
• Commands
• ImagePullSecrets

The following Kubernetes features are not currently supported as part of the aci-connector.

• ConfigMaps
• Secrets
• ServiceAccounts
• Volumes
• kubectl logs
• kubectl exec

1. Edit examples/aci-connector.yaml and supply environment variables
2. Run the ACI Connector with kubectl create -f examples/aci-connector.yaml
3. Wait for kubectl get nodes to display the aci-connector node
4. Run an NGINX pod via ACI using kubectl create -f examples/nginx-pod.yaml
5. Access the NGINX pod via its public address

The ACI Connector will create each container instance in a specified resource group. You can create a new resource group with:

$ az group create -n aci-test -l westus
{
  "id": "/subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/resourceGroups/aci-test",
  "location": "westus",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "aci-test",
  "properties": {
    "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
  },
  "tags": null
}

Edit the examples/aci-connector.yaml and put the name of the resource group into the ACI_RESOURCE_GROUP environment variable.

A service principal is required to allow the ACI Connector to create resources in your Azure subscription. You can create one using the az CLI using the instructions below.

Find your subscriptionId with the az CLI:

$ az account list -o table
Name                                             CloudName    SubscriptionId                        State    IsDefault
-----------------------------------------------  -----------  ------------------------------------  -------  -----------
Pay-As-You-Go                                    AzureCloud   12345678-9012-3456-7890-123456789012  Enabled  True

Use az to create a Service Principal that can perform operations on your subscription:

$ az ad sp create-for-rbac --role=Contributor --scopes /subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/
{
  "appId": "<redacted>",
  "displayName": "azure-cli-2017-07-19-19-13-19",
  "name": "http://azure-cli-2017-07-19-19-13-19",
  "password": "<redacted>",
  "tenant": "<redacted>"
}

Edit the examples/aci-connector.yaml and input environment variables using the values above:

• AZURE_CLIENT_ID: insert appId
• AZURE_CLIENT_KEY: insert password
• AZURE_TENANT_ID: insert tenant
• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID: insert subscriptionId

$ az provider list -o table | grep ContainerInstance
Microsoft.ContainerInstance             NotRegistered

If it is not registered, register it by running the following command.

$ az provider register -n Microsoft.ContainerInstance
$ az provider list -o table | grep ContainerInstance
Microsoft.ContainerInstance             Registered

$ kubectl create -f examples/aci-connector.yaml 
deployment "aci-connector" created

$ kubectl get nodes -w
NAME                        STATUS                     AGE       VERSION
aci-connector               Ready                      3s        1.6.6
k8s-agentpool1-31868821-0   Ready                      5d        v1.7.0
k8s-agentpool1-31868821-1   Ready                      5d        v1.7.0
k8s-agentpool1-31868821-2   Ready                      5d        v1.7.0
k8s-master-31868821-0       Ready,SchedulingDisabled   5d        v1.7.0

First, make sure to fill the values in the values.yaml file located in the /charts/aci-connector directory.

You can then install the chart:

$ helm install --name my-release ./charts/aci-connector

There's also the option to set the values from the command line. This will override any values in the values.yaml file:

$ helm install --name my-release --set env.azureClientId=YOUR-AZURECLIENTID,env.azureClientKey=YOUR-AZURECLIENTKEY,env.azureTenantId=YOUR-AZURETENANTID,env.azureSubscriptionId=YOUR-AZURESUBSCRIPTIONID,env.aciResourceGroup=YOUR-ACIRESOURCEGROUP,env.aciRegion=YOUR-ACI-REGION ./charts/aci-connector

$ kubectl create -f examples/nginx-pod.yaml 
pod "nginx" created

$ kubectl get po -w -o wide
NAME          READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE       IP             NODE
aci-connector-3396840456-v75q2  1/1       Running   0          44s       10.244.2.21    k8s-agentpool1-31868821-2
nginx         1/1       Running   0          31s       13.88.27.150   aci-connector

Note the pod is scheduled on the aci-connector node. It should now be accessible at the public IP listed.

The example in nginx-pod hard codes the node name, but you can also use the Kubernetes scheduler.

The virtual aci node, has a taint (azure.com/aci) with a default effect of NoSchedule. This means that by default Pods will not schedule onto the aci node unless they are explicitly placed there.

However, if you create a Pod that tolerates this taint, it can be scheduled to the aci node by the Kubernetes scheduler.

Here is an example of Pod with this toleration.

To use this Pod, you can simply:

$ kubectl create -f examples/nginx-pod-tolerations.yaml

Note that if you have other nodes in your cluster then this Pod may not necessarily schedule onto the Azure Container Instances.

To force a Pod onto Azure Container Instances, you can either explicitly specify the NodeName as in the first example, or you can delete all of the other nodes in your cluster using kubectl delete nodes <node-name>. A third option is to fill your cluster with other workloads, then the scheduler will be obligated to schedule work to the Azure Container Instance API.

"Canary" builds are versions of the connector that are built periodically from the latest master branch. They are not official releases, and may not be stable. However, they offer the opportunity to test the cutting edge features.

To use the latest canary release you can patch the aci-connector deployment to update the container tag using the following command:

$ kubectl set image deploy/aci-connector aci-connector=microsoft/aci-connector-k8s:canary

<edit source>
$ make clean
$ make build
$ node connector.js

make docker-build
docker tag <local-image> <remote-image>
docker push <remote-image>

Then edit examples/aci-connector.yaml to point to the remote-image.

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