In this article, I’m going to show you how you can manage your minty fresh AKS HCI clusters that have been deployed by PowerShell, from your Windows workstation. It will detail what you need to do to obtain the various config files required to manage the clusters, as well as the tools (kubectl and helm).

I want to run this from a system that isn’t one the HCI cluster nodes, as I wanted to test a ‘real life’ scenario. I wouldn’t want to be installing tools like helm on production HCI servers, although it’s fine for kicking the tires.

Mainly I’m going to show how I’ve automated the installation of the tools, the onboarding process for the cluster to Azure Arc, and also deploying Container Insights, so the AKS HCI clusters can be monitored.

TL;DR - jump here to get the script and what configuration steps you need to do to run it

Here’s the high-level steps:

Install the Az PoSh modules
Connect to a HCI cluster node that has the AksHCI PoSh module deployed (where you ran the AKS HCI deployment from)
Copy the kubectl binary from the HCI node to your Win 10 system
Install Chocolatey (if not already installed)
Install Helm via Choco
Get the latest Container Insights deployment script
Get the config files for all the AKS HCI clusters deployed to the HCI cluster
Onboard the cluster to Arc if not already completed
Deploy the Container Insights solution to each of the clusters

Assumptions

connectivity to the Internet.
Steps 1 - 5 of the Arc for Kubernetes onboarding have taken place and the service principal has required access to carry out the deployment. Detailed instructions are here
You have already deployed one or more AKS HCI clusters.

Install the Az PoSh Modules

We use the Az module to run some checks that the cluster has been onboarded to Arc. The enable-monitoring.ps1 script requires these modules too.

Connect to a HCI Node that has the AksHci PowerShell module deployed

I’m making the assumption that you will have already deployed your AKS HCI cluster via PowerShell, so one of the HCI cluster nodes already has the latest version of the AksHci PoSh module installed. Follow the instructions here if you need guidance.

In the script I wrote, the remote session is stored as a variable and used throughout

Copy the kubectl binary from the HCI node to your Win 10 system

I make it easy on myself by copying the kubectl binary that’s installed as part of the AKS HCI deployment on the HCI cluster node. I use the stored session details to do this. I place it in a directory called c:\wssd on my workstation as it matches the AKS HCI deployment location.

Install Chocolatey

The recommended way to install Helm on Windows is via Chocolatey, per https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/, hence the need to install Choco. You can manually install it via https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1, but my script does it for you.

Install Helm via Choco

Once Choco is installed, we can go and grab helm by running:

choco install kubernetes-helm -y

Get the latest Container Insights deployment script

Microsoft have provided a PowerShell script to enable monitoring of Arc managed K8s clusters here.

Full documentation on the steps are here.

Get the config files for all the AKS HCI clusters deployed to the HCI cluster

This is where we use the AksHci module to obtain the config files for the clusters we have deployed. First, we get a list of all the deployed AKS HCI clusters with this command:

get-akshcicluster

Then we iterate through those objects and get the config file so we can connect to the Kubernetes cluster using kubectl. Here’s the command:

get-akshcicredential -clustername $AksHciClustername

Onboard the cluster to Arc if not already completed

First, we check to see if the cluster is already onboarded to Arc. We construct the resource Id and then use the Get-AzResource command to check. If the resource doesn’t exist, then we use the Install-AksHciArcOnboarding cmdlet to get the cluster onboarded to our desired subscription, region and resource group.

$aksHciCluster = $aksCluster.Name
$azureArcClusterResourceId = "/subscriptions/$subscriptionId/resourceGroups/$resourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Kubernetes/connectedClusters/$aksHciCluster"

#Onboard the cluster to Arc
$AzureArcClusterResource = Get-AzResource -ResourceId $azureArcClusterResourceId
if ($null -eq $AzureArcClusterResource) {        
            Invoke-Command -Session $session -ScriptBlock { Install-AksHciArcOnboarding -clustername $using:aksHciCluster -location $using:location -tenantId $using:tenant -subscriptionId $using:subscriptionId -resourceGroup $using:resourceGroup -clientId $using:appId -clientSecret $using:password }
            # Wait until the onboarding has completed...
            . $kubectl logs job/azure-arc-onboarding -n azure-arc-onboarding --follow
        }

Deploy the Container Insights solution to each of the clusters

Finally, we use the enable-monitoring.ps1 script with the necessary parameters to deploy the Container Insights solution to the Kubernetes cluster.

NOTE
At the time of developing the script, I found that I had to edit the veriosn of enable-monitoring.ps1 that was downloaded, as the helm chart version defined (2.7.8) was not available. I changed this to 2.7.7 and it worked.
The current version of the script script on GitHub is now set to 2.7.9, which works.
If you do find there are issues, it is worth trying a previous version, as I did.

You want to look for where the variable $mcrChartVersion is set (line 63 in the version I downloaded) and change to:

$mcrChartVersion = "2.7.7"

Putting It Together: The Script

With the high level steps described, go grab the script.

You’ll need to modify it once downloaded to match your environment. The variables you need to modify are listed below and are at the beginning of the script. (I didn’t get around to parameterizing it; go stand in the corner, Danny! :) )

$hcinode = '<hci-server-name>'
$resourceGroup = "<Your Arc Resource Group>"
$location = "<Region of resource>"
$subscriptionId = "<Azure Subscription ID>"
$appId = "<App ID of Service Principal>"
$password = "<Ap ID Secret>"
$tenant = "<Tenant ID for Service Principal>"

Hopefully it’s clear enough that you’ll need to have created a Service Principal in your Azure Sub, providing the App Id, Secret and Tenant Id. You also need to provide the Subscription of the Azure Sub you are connecting Arc to as well as the Resource Group name. If you’re manually creating a Service principal, make sure it has rights to the Resource Group (e.g. Contributor)

Reminder
Follow Steps 1 - 5 in the following doc to ensure the pre-reqs for Arc onboarding are in place. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/aks-hci/connect-to-arc

When the script is run, it will retrieve all the AKS HCI clusters you have deployed and check they are onboarded to Arc. If not , it will go ahead and do that. Then it will retrieve the kubeconfig file, store it locally and add the path to the file to the KUBECONFIG environment variable. Lastly, it will deploy the Container Insights monitoring solution.

Here is an example of the Arc onboarding logs

and here is confirmation of successful deployment of the Container Insights for Containers solution to the cluster.What you will see in the Azure Portal for Arc managed K8s clusters: — and here is confirmation of successful deployment of the Container Insights for Containers solution to the cluster.
What you will see in the Azure Portal for Arc managed K8s clusters:

Here’s an example of what you will see in the Azure Portal when the Container Insights solution is deployed to the cluster, lots of great insights and information are surfaced:

On my local system, I can administer my clusters now using Kubectl and Helm. Here’s an example that shows that I have multiple clusters in my config and has specific contexts :

The config is derived from the KUBECTL environment variable. Note how the config files I retrieved are explicitly stated:

I’m sure that as AKS HCI matures, more elegant solutions to enable remote management and monitoring will be available, but in the meantime, I’m pretty pleased that I achieved what I set out to do.

I’ve been testing AKS HCI for a couple of months now, and I’m really excited about it as a platform and the possibilities it unlocks.

In the course of my testing, I’ve encountered some problems and undocumented steps that need to be configured to unsure that when you deploy your cluster, you are more likely to have success. Here’s a list in no particular order:

I’ll try and add to the list as and when I come across other gotchas

Using the PowerShell module is more efficient than using Windows Admin Center

I’ve tested deployments using both WAC and the PowerShell module and I’ve found using the latter gives the more consistent experience.

When first setting up AKS on the HCI cluster via WAC, a number of binaries / agents / scripts / OS images are downloaded to a working directory on the system running WAC before being copied to a CSV on the cluster. If you restart the wizard for whatever reason, all the contents of this working directory are wiped and downloaded again. I’ve found that with WAC, all the possible K8s Linux images are downloaded (at approx. 4 - 4.5 GB per image):

As you can see above, the Windows image is even larger. You may not want to run Windows workloads at the moment, but you’ve got to get the image no matter what.

The PowerShell module is more efficient, as it only downloads the image you require at that time. You can also specify an image store directory for the images when deploying to a cluster. This directory is persistent, so if you need to re-run installations due to failures, at least the time taken to download the images is saved.

Make sure your HCI Cluster has the correct rights in AD

On a couple of occasions, I’ve come across issues which have been resolved by making sure that the Azure Stack HCI Cluster has been correctly configured within Active Directory. As the AKS HCI installer (both PowerShell and WAC based) creates a generic service on the cluster to run the ‘Cloud Agent’ which is required as part of the deployment, the cluster computer object needs the rights to create (and delete) Computer objects at least.

Here’s an example of an error I encountered when it wasn’t configured:

For anyone interested, this is how to configure AD to resolve the problem:

Open dsa.msc (Active Directory Users and Computers) as a user with rights to modify security on the OU that the cluster computer object is located in.

Make sure the ‘Advanced Features’ option is selected within the View menu, to expose the Security tab within the OU properties.

Navigate to the OU where the HCI Cluster computer object is located in (in the example above, it is in the default Computer OU). Right click and select Properties.

From the resultant window, click on the Security tab, then Advanced

Click on Add

Click on Add, then Select a principal (1). Make sure you add the Computer Object type (2), enter the name of the HCI Cluster in the object name, chcek it is valid and click OK (3).

Make sure that the Create and Delete Computer Objects permissions are selected and then click OK. on the open windows to assign the permission.

Currently, you can only run the PowerShell modules directly on a HCI Node

This is for awareness, but you must run the AKS HCI PowerShell modules on a HCI node, PowerShell remoting is not supported currently. So you will need to RDP to the server to do this.

Pre-create a WSSD directory on your CSV

For version 0.2.8 of the AksHci PowerShell Module, I found that the kube-config yaml file attempts to be stored in a directory called wssd on the CSV that you specify when setting the config (e.g. if you specify the following: Set-AksHciConfig -deploymentType MultiNode -wssdImageDir 'C:\ClusterStorage\Volume01\wssdImages' -cloudConfigLocation C:\ClusterStorage\Volume01\aks-clus01-config -vnetName Computeswitch, the install routine would attempt to store the kube-config file in C:\ClusterStorage\Volume01\wssd).

If the wssd directory does not exist prior to installation, the routine will error. To get around this, create the directory beforehand.

Managing AKS HCI Clusters from your workstation