AKS dual deployment and System Stress Test

Purpose of this repository is to:

1. Deploy Standard and Automatic AKS clusters that are as similar as possible
2. Break system critical pods and monitor the results.

Each cluster consists of:

• System Node Pool (3 nodes, configurable VM size, availability zones 1-3, autoscaling enabled)
• User Node Pool (3 nodes, configurable VM size, availability zones 1-3, autoscaling enabled)
• Azure Policy Add-on enabled for governance and compliance (default on AKS)
• Azure Monitor for Containers for external monitoring of cluster health
• aks-store-demo deployed via Helm, ensuring pods run in all zones.

The repository includes a stress test to overload the system node pool and measure the effects on the application and cluster stability.

Prerequisites

• Terraform (
• Azure CLI
• kubectl
• kubelogin
• Helm
• Quota available for the requested VM sizes in the target region
• an Azure Entra ID group and tenant
• Registered for the SKU preview for Automatic

Test prerequisites are set up correctly

./0-test-prereqs.sh

Pick a SKU that's in all 3 zones (or edit configuration accordingly)

Capacity: List of SKU options that are in all 3 zones (replace northeurope):

 az vm list-skus --location northeurope --resource-type virtualMachines --output table | grep -E "1,2,3" | grep -v "NotAvailableForSubscription"

Quota: List of SKU options (replace northeurope, then add SKUs from previous command output):

az vm list-usage --location northeurope --output table | grep -E "Total Regional|standard Dadv6|standard Dalv6|standard Dav6|standard Eadv6|standard Eav6|Standard Falsv6|Standard Famsv6|Standard Fasv6|Standard M"

Configuration Options

Key variables can be customized in terraform.tfvars, such as region, SKU and K8s version.

Infrastructure Deployment

1. Enable AKS Automatic Preview Feature

az feature register --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService --name AutomaticSKUPreview
# Wait a while
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService
# Wait a while

2. Deploy Infrastructure and authenticate

./1-infra.sh

2. Import AKS Store Demo and other images to ACR

./2-import-images.sh

3a (optional). Use helm to install the AKS Store Demo so we have something to test against in user land

./3-aks-store-demo-optional.sh

3b (optional). Use helm to install Headlamp

./3b-headlamp-optional.sh

4. System Stress test

./4-stresstest.sh

5. Cleanup

./5-cleanup.sh