Deploy EMQX clusters on Azure AKS using EMQX Operator

Terminology explanation

EMQX: The most scalable open-source MQTT broker for IoT. For details：EMQX docs (opens new window)

EMQX Operator: A Kubernetes Operator for EMQX. For details：EMQX Operator docs (opens new window)

AKS: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies deploying a managed Kubernetes cluster in Azure by offloading the operational overhead to Azure. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks, like health monitoring and maintenance. Since Kubernetes masters are managed by Azure, you only manage and maintain the agent nodes. For details：Azure docs (opens new window)

Create AKS Cluster

Log in to the Azure AKS dashboard, go to the Kubernetes service, and create a Kubernetes cluster. EMQX Operator requires Kubernetes version >= 1.20.0, so we choose Kubernetes 1.22.11 here, and network and other resource information according to your needs. For details (opens new window)

Access Kubernetes cluster

It is recommended to connect through the Cloud Shell provided by Azure. For details (opens new window)

StorageClass configurations

NSF file storage is used here. Other StorageClass, please refer to storage class (opens new window)

Create StroageClass

cat << "EOF" | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: azurefile-csi-nfs
provisioner: file.csi.azure.com
allowVolumeExpansion: true
parameters:
  protocol: nfs
mountOptions:
  - nconnect=8
EOF

Check if the StroageClass was created successfully

kubectl get sc

You can see that azurefile-csi-nfs has been successfully created

Deploy EMQX cluster with EMQX Operator

Operator installation refer to Operator docs (opens new window)

After the Operator installation is complete, deploy the EMQX cluster on Azure using the following yaml

cat << "EOF" | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: apps.emqx.io/v1beta3
kind: EmqxEnterprise
metadata:
  name: emqx-ee
  labels:
    "foo": "bar"
spec:
  replicas: 3
  persistent:
     storageClassName: azurefile-csi-nfs
     resources:
       requests:
         storage: 4Gi
     accessModes:
     - ReadWriteOnce
  emqxTemplate:
    image: emqx/emqx-ee:4.4.8
    serviceTemplate:
      spec:
        type: LoadBalancer
EOF

Here the service type is LoadBalancer

About LoadBalancer offloading TLS

Since Azure LoadBalancer does not support TCP certificates, please refer to this document (opens new window) to resolve TCP certificate offloading issues.