Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) allows you to integrate with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to secure access to your AKS clusters. Azure AD is a cloud-based identity and access management service that provides authentication and authorization capabilities for applications and services running in Azure.
When you integrate AKS with Azure AD, you can use Azure AD to authenticate users and control access to your AKS clusters. This provides a centralized and secure way to manage access to your clusters, and allows you to use your existing Azure AD identities to authenticate to the cluster.
Here are some benefits of integrating AKS with Azure AD:
- Use Azure AD identities for authentication: You can use Azure AD to authenticate users and applications that access your AKS clusters. This allows you to leverage your existing Azure AD identities and roles for access control.
- Role-based access control (RBAC): AKS supports RBAC, which allows you to control access to your cluster based on roles and permissions. You can use Azure AD to manage RBAC for your AKS clusters.
- Secure your cluster with Azure AD Conditional Access: Azure AD Conditional Access allows you to enforce additional security controls, such as multi-factor authentication and device-based access policies, when accessing your AKS cluster.
- Use Azure AD Pod Identity: AKS supports Azure AD Pod Identity, which allows you to assign an Azure AD identity to a pod running in your cluster. This identity can be used to authenticate to Azure services, such as Azure Key Vault or Azure Storage, without requiring you to manage service principal credentials.
To integrate AKS with Azure AD, you need to create an Azure AD application and service principal, and then grant the necessary permissions to the application. You can do this using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure CLI.
Once the application is created, you can use the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or the Kubernetes command-line tool (kubectl) to configure AKS to use Azure AD for authentication and RBAC. You can also use Azure AD Pod Identity to assign an identity to a pod running in your cluster.
Overall, integrating AKS with Azure AD provides a secure and centralized way to manage access to your AKS clusters, and allows you to leverage your existing Azure AD identities and roles for authentication and access control.
