We have released multiple actions to help you connect to a Kubernetes cluster running on-premises or on any cloud (including Azure Kubernetes Service – AKS), bake and deploy manifests, substitute artifacts, check rollout status, and handle secrets within the cluster.

• Kubectl tool installer(azure/setup-kubectl): Installs a specific version of kubectl on the runner.
• Kubernetes set context(azure/k8s-set-context): Used for setting the target Kubernetes cluster context which will be used by other actions or run any kubectl commands.
• AKS set context(azure/aks-set-context): Used for setting the target Azure Kubernetes Service cluster context .
• Kubernetes create secret(azure/k8s-create-secret): Create a generic secret or docker-registry secret in the Kubernetes cluster.
• Kubernetes deploy(azure/ k8s-deploy): Use this to bake and deploy manifests to Kubernetes clusters.
• Setup Helm(azure/setup-helm): Install a specific version of Helm binary on the runner.
• Kubernetes bake(azure/k8s-bake): Use this action to bake manifest file to be used for deployments using helm2, kustomize or kompose.

Refer to starter templates to easily get started:

• Deploy to AKS using Manifest files to build & a container image to ACR (Azure Container Registry) and deploy to AKS.
• Deploy to AKS using Helm to build & a container image to ACR (Azure Container Registry) and deploy to AKS.

The workflows contain primarily the below sections:

For containerized apps (single- or multi-containers) to create a complete workflow

• use Docker login(azure/docker-login) for authentication And then run docker commands to build container images, push to the container registry (Docker Hub or Azure Container Registry) and then deploy the images to a Azure Web App or Azure Function for Containers, or to Kubernetes.

To deploy to a cluster on Azure Kubernetes Service, you could use azure/aks-set-context to communicate with the AKS cluster using Azure credentials, and then use azure/k8s-create-secret to create a pull image secret and finally use the azure/k8s-deploy to deploy the manifest files.

To fetch the credentials required to authenticate with Azure, run the following command:

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "myApp" --role contributor \
                            --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/{resource-group} \
                            --sdk-auth
                            
  # Replace {subscription-id}, {resource-group} with the subscription, resource group details

  # The command should output a JSON object similar to this:

  {
    "clientId": "<GUID>",
    "clientSecret": "<GUID>",
    "subscriptionId": "<GUID>",
    "tenantId": "<GUID>",
    (...)
  }

Add the json output as a secret (let's say with the name AZURE_CREDENTIALS) in the GitHub repository.

To connect to a cluster on any Kubernetes cluster, you could use azure/k8s-set-context; and then use azure/k8s-create-secret or azure/k8s-deploy, or run any kubectl commands.

Use secret (https://developer.github.com/actions/managing-workflows/storing-secrets/) in workflow for kubeconfig or k8s-values.

PS: kubeconfig takes precedence (i.e. kubeconfig would be created using the value supplied in kubeconfig)

az aks get-credentials --name
                       --resource-group
                       [--admin]
                       [--file]
                       [--overwrite-existing]
                       [--subscription]

Refer to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/aks?view=azure-cli-latest#az-aks-get-credentials

Please refer to https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/organize-cluster-access-kubeconfig/

kubectl config view --minify -o jsonpath={.clusters[0].cluster.server}

Get service account secret names by running

kubectl get sa <service-account-name> -n <namespace> -o=jsonpath={.secrets[*].name}

Use the output of the above command

kubectl get secret <service-account-secret-name> -n <namespace> -o json

Now add the values as a secret in the GitHub repository. In the example below the secret name is KUBE_CONFIG and it can be used in the workflow by using the following syntax:

 - uses: azure/k8s-set-context@v1
      with:
        kubeconfig: ${{ secrets.KUBE_CONFIG }}