Advanced Kubernetes/AKS Network & Infrastructure

For an AKS cluster, there are two types of traffic. First one is the internal traffic between pods. The second one is the ingress and egress traffic that is between pods and the end users or the internet.

This course provides the tools and techniques to secure these networks using tools like Network Policies with Calico, TLS certificates, etc.

Microsoft provides the following recommendations to secure an AKS cluster and this course will try to go deeper with demonstration.

Recommendation 1: To distribute HTTP or HTTPS traffic to your applications, use ingress resources and controllers. Compared to an Azure load balancer, ingress controllers provide extra features and can be managed as native Kubernetes resources.

Recommendation 2: To scan incoming traffic for potential attacks, use a web application firewall (WAF) such as Barracuda WAF for Azure or Azure Application Gateway. These more advanced network resources can also route traffic beyond just HTTP and HTTPS connections or basic TLS termination.

Recommendation 3: Use network policies to allow or deny traffic to pods. By default, all traffic is allowed between pods within a cluster. For improved security, define rules that limit pod communication.

Recommendation 4: Don’t expose remote connectivity to your AKS nodes. Create a bastion host, or jump box, in a management virtual network. Use the bastion host to securely route traffic into your AKS cluster to remote management tasks.