Add-ons, extensions, and other integrations with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides extra functionality for your clusters using add-ons and extensions. Open-source projects and third parties provide by more integrations that are commonly used with AKS. The AKS support policy doesn't support the open-source and third-party integrations.
Add-ons
Add-ons are a fully supported way to provide extra capabilities for your AKS cluster. The installation, configuration, and lifecycle of add-ons is managed by AKS. You can use the az aks enable-addons command to install an add-on or manage the add-ons for your cluster.
AKS uses the following rules for applying updates to installed add-ons:
- Only an add-on's patch version can be upgraded within a Kubernetes minor version. The add-on's major/minor version isn't upgraded within the same Kubernetes minor version.
- The major/minor version of the add-on is only upgraded when moving to a later Kubernetes minor version.
- Any breaking or behavior changes to the add-on are announced well before, usually 60 days, for a GA minor version of Kubernetes on AKS.
- You can patch add-ons weekly with every new release of AKS, which is announced in the release notes. You can control AKS releases using the maintenance windows and release tracker.
Exceptions
- Add-ons are upgraded to a new major/minor version (or breaking change) within a Kubernetes minor version if either the cluster's Kubernetes version or the add-on version are in preview.
- There may be unavoidable circumstances, such as CVE security patches or critical bug fixes, when you need to update an add-on within a GA minor version.
Available add-ons
| Name | Description | More details |
|---|---|---|
| http_application_routing | Configure ingress with automatic public DNS name creation for your AKS cluster. | HTTP application routing add-on on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) |
| monitoring | Use Container Insights monitoring with your AKS cluster. | Container insights overview |
| virtual-node | Use virtual nodes with your AKS cluster. | Use virtual nodes |
| azure-policy | Use Azure Policy for AKS, which enables at-scale enforcements and safeguards on your clusters in a centralized, consistent manner. | Understand Azure Policy for Kubernetes clusters |
| ingress-appgw | Use Application Gateway Ingress Controller with your AKS cluster. | What is Application Gateway Ingress Controller? |
| open-service-mesh | Use Open Service Mesh with your AKS cluster. | Open Service Mesh AKS add-on |
| azure-keyvault-secrets-provider | Use Azure Keyvault Secrets Provider addon. | Use the Azure Key Vault Provider for Secrets Store CSI Driver in an AKS cluster |
| web_application_routing | Use a managed NGINX ingress controller with your AKS cluster. | Web Application Routing Overview |
| keda | Use event-driven autoscaling for the applications on your AKS cluster. | Simplified application autoscaling with Kubernetes Event-driven Autoscaling (KEDA) add-on |
Extensions
Cluster extensions build on top of certain Helm charts and provide an Azure Resource Manager-driven experience for installation and lifecycle management of different Azure capabilities on top of your Kubernetes cluster.
- For more information on the specific cluster extensions for AKS, see Deploy and manage cluster extensions for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
- For more information on available cluster extensions, see Currently available extensions.
Difference between extensions and add-ons
Extensions and add-ons are both supported ways to add functionality to your AKS cluster. When you install an add-on, the functionality is added as part of the AKS resource provider in the Azure API. When you install an extension, the functionality is added as part of a separate resource provider in the Azure API.
GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions helps you automate your software development workflows from within GitHub.
- For more information on using GitHub Actions with Azure, see GitHub Actions for Azure.
- For an example of using GitHub Actions with an AKS cluster, see Build, test, and deploy containers to Azure Kubernetes Service using GitHub Actions.
Open-source and third-party integrations
There are many open-source and third-party integrations you can install on your AKS cluster. The AKS support policy doesn't support the following open-source and third-party integrations.
| Name | Description | More details |
|---|---|---|
| Helm | An open-source packaging tool that helps you install and manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes applications. | Quickstart: Develop on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with Helm |
| Prometheus | An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit. | Container insights with metrics in Prometheus format, Prometheus Helm chart |
| Grafana | An open-source dashboard for observability. | Deploy Grafana on Kubernetes or use Managed Grafana |
| Couchbase | A distributed NoSQL cloud database. | Install Couchbase and the Operator on AKS |
| OpenFaaS | An open-source framework for building serverless functions by using containers. | Use OpenFaaS with AKS |
| Apache Spark | An open-source, fast engine for large-scale data processing. | Running Apache Spark jobs requires a minimum node size of Standard_D3_v2. See running Spark on Kubernetes for more details on running Spark jobs on Kubernetes. |
| Istio | An open-source service mesh. | Istio Installation Guides |
| Linkerd | An open-source service mesh. | Linkerd Getting Started |
| Consul | An open-source, identity-based networking solution. | Getting Started with Consul Service Mesh for Kubernetes |
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