Deploy on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

knext runs on any Kubernetes cluster with Knative Serving, including AKS. The general control-plane install is on Operator & the NextApp CRD; the prerequisites and config walkthrough are in Getting started. This page covers only the Azure-specific pieces.

1 · Create the cluster

az aks create \
  --resource-group <rg> \
  --name <cluster-name> \
  --node-count 2 \
  --generate-ssh-keys

az aks get-credentials --resource-group <rg> --name <cluster-name>

For the bytecode-cache PVC, knext needs a StorageClass that provisions writable volumes. AKS ships the Azure Disk CSI driver as the managed-csi StorageClass:

kubectl get storageclass managed-csi

2 · Install Knative, Kourier, cert-manager, and the operator

Follow Operator & the NextApp CRD for the one-command bundle install. The prerequisites — Knative Serving + Kourier, cert-manager, and a StorageClass — are listed in Getting started. The bundle ships a config-network ConfigMap that pins the Kourier ingress-class; apply it with kubectl apply --server-side so it merges into Knative Serving's own ConfigMap.

3 · Storage — MinIO or an S3 gateway (not Azure Blob)

• Self-hosted MinIO (S3-API, runs in-cluster): provider: 'minio' with endpoint pointing at the in-cluster MinIO Service.
• An S3-compatible gateway in front of object storage: provider: 's3' with endpoint set to that gateway.

The example below uses self-hosted MinIO.

4 · Cache — Azure Cache for Redis

ISR / data cache uses Redis (cache.provider: 'redis'). Point cache.url at an Azure Cache for Redis instance (or a self-hosted Redis Service). cache.url is required when the provider is redis.

5 · Registry — ACR

Push the app image to Azure Container Registry, e.g. <registry>.azurecr.io/storefront. Attach ACR to the cluster (az aks update --attach-acr) so nodes can pull. The operator rejects any image that is not digest-pinned (@sha256:…); kn-next deploy resolves the digest automatically.

6 · Complete kn-next.config.ts

import type { KnativeNextConfig } from '@knext/core';

const config: KnativeNextConfig = {
  name: 'storefront',
  registry: '<registry>.azurecr.io/storefront',

  storage: {
    provider: 'minio', // self-hosted MinIO (S3-API). Azure Blob is NOT supported.
    bucket: 'storefront-assets',
    endpoint: 'http://minio.minio.svc.cluster.local:9000',
    publicUrl: 'https://assets.example.com/storefront-assets',
    accessKey: process.env.MINIO_ACCESS_KEY,
    secretKey: process.env.MINIO_SECRET_KEY,
  },

  cache: {
    provider: 'redis',
    url: process.env.REDIS_URL || 'rediss://<name>.redis.cache.windows.net:6380',
    keyPrefix: 'storefront',
  },

  scaling: { minScale: 0, maxScale: 20 }, // minScale 0 = scale to zero
};

export default config;

7 · Deploy

kn-next deploy --registry <registry>.azurecr.io/storefront

kn-next deploy builds the standalone image, pushes it (resolving the digest), and applies the NextApp CR; the operator reconciles it into a scale-to-zero Knative Service. Verify the resolved URL with kubectl get ksvc storefront -o jsonpath='{.status.url}'.