Pixel Robots. ☁️☸️ (Richard Hooper)

Just put AKS Flex Nodes (preview) through their paces for an upcoming deep-dive blog. 🧪 Spun up a cluster, added a flexpool, scheduled a pod, watched it land. Scale-to-zero + on-demand VM capacity without the usual node pool rigidity. Full write-up soon. #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

🆕 AKS now lets you pick your control plane tier. H2 = 1,750 API concurrency + 200 pods/sec 🚀 H4 doubles that ⬆️ H8 doubles again ⬆️⬆️ ⚠️ Terraform not supported yet, one cluster per sub per region during preview, and you can't add it to an existing cluster. New post 👇 buff.ly/z9IRp71

Spotted this via the AKS Docs Tracker. AKS Shared Maintenance Windows are now in preview. Create one schedule and link it to as many clusters as you need. If maintenance drift is causing you pain across environments, it's worth testing now. buff.ly/qn4sRdm #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

AKS folks: this Azure Policy update is worth a look. Validation now runs natively in the API server with CEL + VAP, so admission is faster and fail-close is stronger. You still get Azure Policy governance at scale. Big win for platform teams. buff.ly/1ztFYGf #Azure #AKS #Kubernetes #AzurePolicy

AKS upgrades blocking on PDB evictions is one of those problems that seems simple until you are staring at a stuck node drain at exactly the wrong moment. 😅 Microsoft has shipped Automatic PDB Management for AKS in preview. New post covering how it works and what to test. 🔗 buff.ly/M1Ed4rX #AKS

KubeBuddy v0.0.35 + Headlamp plugin v0.3.0 are out. 20 new Kubernetes checks, taking KubeBuddy to 126 Kubernetes checks, plus 43 AKS and 28 GKE checks. New Risk Paths correlate findings into direct and chained risk areas so you know what to fix first. kubebuddy.io

Ever had AKS reimage your nodes mid-business-hours because of a config change and had no say in the matter? 🙃 AKS Node Disruption Policy is now in preview and fixes that. New post 👇 buff.ly/ubqyyzf #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

Bicep 0.45.6 added ociEnabled. I used it to distribute modules via ACR tokens. Access revokes the moment the contract ends. The routing rule makes it harder than it should be. New post on the workaround. buff.ly/JBWDXn1

New AKS extension in preview: Inspektor Gadget for AKS. eBPF-powered troubleshooting for DNS, processes, network connections, dropped packets, and more, with Kubernetes context built in. Worth a look 👇 buff.ly/bC4oPhK #Azure #AKS #Kubernetes #eBPF

Tried the AI work-life sketch trend. Apparently my career can be summarised as: Azure + Kubernetes + automation + open source + writing + speaking + building things + helping customers. Fair enough. AI created the picture in minutes. The experience behind it took a few more years.

I shipped two Headlamp plugins and wrote up exactly what they do, why I built them, and how to get them running. One scans your cluster for issues without touching any cluster config. One builds branded themes in the browser. Blog post 👇 buff.ly/aOOBA1a #Kubernetes #Headlamp #KubeBuddy

KubeBuddy v0.0.31 is live, now with the first KubeBuddy Headlamp plugin. Run Kubernetes health checks directly in Headlamp with cluster score, priority findings, section breakdowns, namespace exclusions, and CSV/JSON export. buff.ly/xr1nwsz #Kubernetes #Headlamp #CloudNative

🚀 Microsoft shipped cert-manager as an Arc Kubernetes extension. The docs say Arc-enabled clusters only. 🤔 I pointed it at a normal AKS cluster instead. Turns out the docs are... conservative. 👀 Full walkthrough including Gateway API + Let's Encrypt end-to-end 🔐: buff.ly/6p1xWAv

Most AKS problems don’t start during an outage. They start on day one with networking, identity, scaling, and cost decisions. The AKS Book is the practical guide I wish I’d had years ago. Paperback UK: buff.ly/gcEbVyy #AKS #Azure

AKS is easy to create. Living with the wrong decisions is the hard part. I wrote The AKS Book for the choices that are hard to reverse, expensive to get wrong, or painful in production. Kindle US: buff.ly/gvXREtr #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

AKS managedNATGatewayV2 is now in public preview. Zone-redundant egress by default, IPv6 outbound, and flow logs. The catch: your outbound IP model is locked at cluster creation and migration to V2 is a one-way door. Full post with Bicep and CLI examples: buff.ly/gtiCFlB

🚀 KubeBuddy v0.0.29 is out! GKE is now fully supported — 22 new best practice checks, live scanning with --gke, and Google Managed Prometheus support built in. 🎉 kubebuddy.io #Kubernetes #GKE #CloudNative

KubeBuddy v0.0.28 is out 🚀 Now fully Go-native with native binaries, AKS + Prometheus support, AI/Radar integration, reports, AKS Automatic Migration Readiness, and a new TUI. No PowerShell runtime, az, kubectl, or kubelogin in the active path. kubebuddy.io

Microsoft just shipped Container Network Insight Agent for AKS in public preview. AI-powered network diagnostics inside your cluster. Describe the problem in plain English, get root cause analysis and exact fix commands back. Full walkthrough: buff.ly/lHSUEHw #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

🚀 The AKS Book is live on Kindle! 17 chapters. Every production AKS decision that matters. Not a tutorial, a decision guide. Foreword by Brendan Burns, co-creator of Kubernetes. Paperback live on Monday. 📖 buff.ly/EURIa27 #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes

KubeBuddy v0.0.24 is live 🚀 Big updates in this release: 📈 Prometheus rightsizing insights (PROM006/PROM007) for nodes and pods, helping you tune CPU/memory requests and limits using real usage trends. If you’re running Kubernetes/AKS, give it a try and tell us what you want next 🙌 kubebuddy.io

With NGINX Ingress retirement hitting next month, a lot of people are asking: "What's next?" 🤔 I have been recommending Envoy Gateway, so thought I'd better spend some time documenting what actually works on AKS. Check it out at: buff.ly/WRXfSNa #Kubernetes #AKS #Azure #EnvoyGateway #GatewayAPI

AKS Automatic just got more flexible 🚀 Deployment Safeguards will no longer deny workloads missing startup, liveness, or readiness probes. They now warn instead. This makes it much easier to deploy third-party Helm charts without extensive modification

🚨 Starting in ~30 mins: AKS Community Call! Join to hear the latest updates, roadmap insights, and connect directly with the Azure Kubernetes Service team. Great chance to learn what’s coming next and ask questions live. 👉 blog.aks.azure.com/webinars/ #AKS #Azure #Kubernetes #CloudNative

🚀 Going live soon! Join me for the first-ever Azure Unpacked livestream starting at 2pm UK time (less than an hour!). Ask your Azure questions live with Wesley Haakman & Me. 👉 buff.ly/UvY8XGa

Finally found time to write up my findings on the NGINX Ingress retirement ⚠️ (March 2026). Full write-up: buff.ly/7oFfsYC

Flatcar Container Linux on #AzureKubernetesService: First Look by Richard Hooper pixelrobots.co.uk/2025/11/flat...

I've been tracking Flatcar for a few years and it's fantastic that it's*finally* supported on AKS. Great article by @pixelrobots.co.uk

📚 Working on something new: "The AKS Book: The Real-World Guide to Azure Kubernetes Service" A practical guide covering everything from cluster setup decisions to production war stories. No fluff, just the lessons learned from running AKS in the real world. What do you think of the cover? 👇

Looks like the new Kubernetes Center is available in the preview portal. Https://preview.portal.azire.com

Some multi-tenant security updates. Managed namespaces going GA super quick!

Security updates for networking too. AGC WAF going GA is awesome!

Even workload security has been updated. Identity bindings is super cool. And now ABAC support for ACR is a game changer! And deployment safeguard has gone GA.

Some nice updates for control plane security. I love the external id for control plane access.

We now have better component insights.

We now have better component insights.

It is now official. Configurable scheduler profiles.

Coming soon. Deploy and test AI models using Kaito and AKS.

Azure Files CSI driver has multichannel support now in public preview.

Now it's time for storage to get the spotlight.

Now Application Gateway For Container (AGC) is getting some love!

Now networking is getting some love. But you do need ACNS. But basically bypasses IP tables and more.

AKS 1.34 supports DRA (Dynamic resource allocation) and MIG (multi-instance GPUs)

AMD and Nvidia GPU support now in AKS as a managed GPU offering.

It's AI time. AKS is a good place to run your AI workloads and models.

Agentic CLI for AKS has gone public preview. This is such a powerful tool! And uses Holmes GPT from Robusta. You should use it.

Container network logs got some love too.

Was watching the demo and noticed a helm as an option in the AKS cluster resource view... Now I am interested.