Dapr extension for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Prerequisites

The recommended approach for installing Dapr on AKS is to use the AKS Dapr extension. The extension offers support for all native Dapr configuration capabilities through command-line arguments via the Azure CLI and offers the option of opting into automatic minor version upgrades of the Dapr runtime.

Note

If you install Dapr through the AKS extension, our recommendation is to continue using the extension for future management of Dapr instead of the Dapr CLI. Combining the two tools can cause conflicts and result in undesired behavior.

The Dapr extension works by provisioning the Dapr control plane on your AKS cluster through the Azure CLI. The dapr control plane consists of:

  • dapr-operator: Manages component updates and Kubernetes services endpoints for Dapr (state stores, pub/subs, etc.)
  • dapr-sidecar-injector: Injects Dapr into annotated deployment pods and adds the environment variables and DAPR_GRPC_PORT. This enables user-defined applications to communicate with Dapr without the need to hard-code Dapr port values.
  • dapr-placement: Used for actors only. Creates mapping tables that map actor instances to pods
  • dapr-sentry: Manages mTLS between services and acts as a certificate authority. For more information read the security overview.

Extension Prerequisites

In order to use the AKS Dapr extension, you must first enable the AKS-ExtensionManager and AKS-Dapr feature flags on your Azure subscription.

After a few minutes, check the status to show Registered. Confirm the registration status by using the az feature list command:

Next, refresh the registration of the Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration and Microsoft.ContainerService resource providers by using the az provider register command:

Enable the Azure CLI extension for cluster extensions

You will also need the k8s-extension Azure CLI extension. Install this by running the following commands:

  1. az extension add --name k8s-extension

If the k8s-extension extension is already present, you can update it to the latest version using the below command:

Create the extension and install Dapr on your AKS cluster

  2. --cluster-name myAKSCluster \
  3. --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  4. --name myDaprExtension \
  5. --extension-type Microsoft.Dapr

Additionally, Dapr can automatically update its minor version. To enable this, set the --auto-upgrade-minor-version parameter to true:

Once the k8-extension finishes provisioning, you can confirm that the Dapr control plane is installed on your AKS cluster by running:

  1. kubectl get pods -n dapr-system

For further information such as configuration options and targeting specific versions of Dapr, please see the official AKS Dapr Extension Docs.