Hands-on: Provision AKS Platform Stack

Combine the earlier lessons into a realistic AKS-ready Terraform composition with shared foundation, registry, identity, and cluster outputs that later pipelines can use.

🎯 Lab Goal

Provision a simplified but realistic AKS platform stack using Terraform modules or layered files, then map where AKS operations, Helm installs, and CI/CD release workflows connect.

🧱 Suggested Stack

🛠️ Lab Steps

1. Reuse the foundation network from the previous lab.
2. Create an Azure Container Registry.
3. Provision an AKS cluster attached to the AKS subnet.
4. Output cluster and registry details for later use.
5. Document which next steps move to the AKS, Helm, and Azure DevOps courses.

Example ACR + AKS Resources

resource "azurerm_container_registry" "platform" {
  name                = "acrplatformdev001"
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.platform.name
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.platform.location
  sku                 = "Premium"
  admin_enabled       = false
}

resource "azurerm_kubernetes_cluster" "platform" {
  name                = "aks-platform-dev"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.platform.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.platform.name
  dns_prefix          = "aksplatformdev"

  default_node_pool {
    name           = "system"
    node_count     = 2
    vm_size        = "Standard_D4s_v5"
    vnet_subnet_id = azurerm_subnet.aks.id
  }

  identity {
    type = "SystemAssigned"
  }
}

Useful Outputs

output "aks_cluster_name" {
  value = azurerm_kubernetes_cluster.platform.name
}

output "acr_login_server" {
  value = azurerm_container_registry.platform.login_server
}

🔗 How This Connects to Other Modules

• The AKS course covers the cluster internals and operational concepts.
• The Helm course covers packaging and deploying workloads into the cluster.
• The Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions courses show how to automate plan, apply, build, push, and deploy workflows around this foundation.

🐛 Break/Fix Exercises

• Intentionally use a subnet that is too small and inspect the resulting failure pattern.
• Change the registry name to an invalid value and see how provider validation responds.
• Remove a required dependency and inspect how apply behaves.

📋 Interview Questions

🧾 Summary

This lab turns Terraform concepts into a platform stack that other SKILLY modules can build on. It is the bridge between infrastructure provisioning and full platform delivery.