Creating custom Azure Policy for Kubernetes to disallow non-compliant image registries

There are cases where you may need to explicitly ensure that specific container image registries are blacklisted from being used in your Kubernetes clusters. Let me provide you with a very recent and relevant example. From 3rd April 2023, k8s.gcr.io legacy image registry is officially frozen which means that no images, future Kubernetes versions and patch releases for earlier Kubernetes versions will be pushed to this registry. At some point in the near future this legacy image registry will be completely deactivated. ...

April 4, 2023 · 4 min · Kristina Devochko

Keeping AKS clusters continuously secure with Azure Policy

🐇This blog post is also a contribution to Azure Spring Clean 2023 where during 5 weekdays of March, 13th-17th, community contributors share learning resources that highlight best practices, lessons learned, and help with some of the more difficult topics of Azure Management. You’re welcome to check out all the contributions here: Azure Spring Clean 2023 As you may know already, Kubernetes doesn’t come with 100% built-in security by default. The same applies for managed Kubernetes service offerings like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Some cloud providers offer more hardened default configuration for a managed Kubernetes service, some offer less hardened and more beginner-friendly default configuration, but the fact stays the fact - cloud services are a shared responsibility. It means that you’re responsible to properly harden and secure Kubernetes clusters that you’re provisioning in the cloud, also in Azure. ...

March 16, 2023 · 14 min · Kristina Devochko

AKS control plane tiers - what, when and how?

Recently a new property became available in Azure Portal when creating a new Azure Kubernetes Service instance: Have you seen it and do you know what it actually is? Wait, does AKS have pricing tiers?! I thought that the only price we need to pay was based on the chosen VM SKU for AKS Nodes….right?🤨 Well, the answer is yes and no.😺 By default AKS is a free service and you only pay for the virtual machines you choose for your Nodes, plus associated storage and networking resources. There are nevertheless some additional billed capabilities that can be enabled, like Uptime SLA, which is now more streamlined with visibility in Azure Portal. ...

January 24, 2023 · 4 min · Kristina Devochko

How to fix ServiceAccount error in Azure DevOps Environments for Kubernetes clusters v.1.24 and newer

Introduction of the issue [Update July 2023] This issue has been resolved and you should be able to create a Kubernetes resource targeting Azure Kubernetes Service in Azure DevOps Environments in the same way as before. Official documentation has been updated with additional details: Kubernetes resource With release of Kubernetes version 1.24 a new feature gate has come to life which is called LegacyServiceAccountTokenNoAutoGeneration, and it is enabled by default. What this feature does is that Secret API objects containing service account tokens are no longer auto-generated for every ServiceAccount. You can read more details about this change in release notes: CHANGELOG-1.24 ...

December 28, 2022 · 9 min · Kristina Devochko

Strengthening security posture of containerized .NET applications with .NET Chiseled Containers (updated Dec.2023)

🎄This blog post is also a contribution to .NET Advent Calendar where during December, experts from the tech community share their knowledge about .NET related topics. You’re welcome to check out all the contributions here: .NET Advent Calendar 2022 Introduction In the modern world of cloud native application development more and more organizations are moving away from classic bare metal deployments and are adopting technologies like containerization and orchestration for a more efficient and sustainable way to deploy applications at scale on different types of infrastructure. ...

December 19, 2022 · 15 min · Kristina Devochko