DuploCloud provides a way to connect directly to the Cluster namespace using the kubectl token.

See kubectl Setup for available options.

Enabling the AKS Kubernetes Cluster

Once your Infrastructure and Plan have been created, the final step before creating a Tenant is to enable Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to connect with Azure cloud management.

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Administrator -> Infrastructure.

2. Select the Infrastructure that you created from the NAME column.

3. Select the Kubernetes tab. The following message displays: Kubernetes cluster is not yet enabled. Click Here to enable the Kubernetes Cluster.

4. Click on the Click Here hyperlink. The Configure AKS Cluster pane displays.
5. In the Cluster name field, specify a name for your cluster.

6. Select your node VM size from the Node VM Size list box.

7. From the AKS Version item list, select your AKS version.

8. In the Cluster Type item list, select Public or Private.

9. Optionally, select Advanced Options to specify your network plugin (Azure or Kubenet), K8s resource group field, and outbound connectivity source (Load Balancer or User Defined Routing).

10. Click Create to enable AKS for your Infrastructure.

DuploCloud begins creating and configuring an AKS cluster using Kubernetes. You receive an alert message when the Infrastructure has been updated.

In Azure, Microsoft cloud features such as Azure resource groups, Azure managed identity, Azure application security groups (ASG), KMS keys, and Kubernetes Namespaces are exposed in Tenants which reference their configurations.

For more information about DuploCloud Tenants, see the Tenants topic in the Getting Started with DuploCloud section.

Creating a Tenant

1. Navigate to Administrator -> Tenant in the DuploCloud Portal and click Add. The Create a Tenant pane displays.

2. In the Name field, enter a name for the Tenant. Choose unique names that are not substrings of one another, for example, if you have a Tenant named dev, you cannot create another named dev2. We recommend using distinct numerical suffixes like dev01 and dev02.

3. In the Plan list box, select the Plan to associate the Tenant with.

4. Click Create. The Tenant is created.

Configuring Tenant Config settings

You can configure settings to apply to all new Tenants under a Plan using the Config tab. Tenant Config settings will not apply to Tenants created under the Plan before the settings were configured.

1. From the DuploCloud portal, navigate to Administrator -> Plan.

2. Click on the Plan you want to configure settings under in the NAME column.

3. Select the Config tab.

4. Click Add. The Add Config pane displays.

5. From the Config Type field, select TenantConfig.

6. In the Name field, enter the setting that you would like to apply to new Tenants under this Plan. (In the example, the enable_alerting setting is entered.)

7. In the Value field, enter True.
8. Click Submit. The setting entered in the Name field (enable alerting in the example) will apply to all new Tenants added under the Plan.

Viewing Tenant Config settings

You can check that the Tenant Config settings are enabled for new Tenants on the Tenants details page, under the Settings tab.

1. From the DuploCloud portal, navigate to Administrator -> Tenants.

2. From the NAME column, select a Tenant that was added after the Tenant Config setting was enabled.

3. Click on the Settings tab.

4. Check that the configured setting is listed in the NAME column. (Enable Alerting in the example.)

Creating an Infrastructure

In DuploCloud, an Infrastructure maps one-to-one to a VPC in a specified region. It also maps to an Azure Managed Kubernetes Service cluster for container orchestration. Up to one instance (0 or 1) of an AKS is supported for each DuploCloud Infrastructure.

1. Select Administrator -> Infrastructure from the navigation menu.

2. Click Add.

3. In the Name field, enter a name for the Infrastructure.

4. From the Account list box, select your account number.

5. In the VNET CIDR field, enter the VNET CIDR.

6. From the Cloud list box, select Azure.

7. Complete the remaining fields on the Add Infrastructure form.

8. Click Create. The Infrastructure is created and is listed on the Infrastructure page. DuploCloud automatically creates a Plan (with the same Infrastructure name) with the Infrastructure configuration.

Enable Kubernetes for AKS

To enable an AKS cluster for Azure, follow these steps.

Enabling an encrypted Azure storage account

You can encrypt your Azure storage account by configuring a Key/Value pair in the Infrastructure.

DuploCloud supports various ways to scale the workload, depending on the underlying Azure services being used.

• Autoscaling Azure Agent Pools

Microsoft frequently updates the version of AKS based on new features that are available in the Kubernetes platform.

In future releases, this upgrade will be available for customers to install.

The DuploCloud Portal allows you to view and manage resource usage costs. As an administrator, you can view your company's billing data by month, week, or Tenant. Configure billing alerts, explore historical resource costs and view DuploCloud license usage information. Non-administrator users can view billing data for Tenants they can access by viewing billing data for a selected Tenant.

Secure your Azure cloud data by enabling Azure storage encryption for data at rest, using Encryption Key Management. Configuring this feature for your DuploCloud Infrastructure enables you to specify customer-managed keys or customer-provided keys for your existing Blob storage.

Configuring Azure encrypted storage accounts in DuploCloud

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Administrator -> System Settings.

2. Click the System Config tab.

3. In the System Configs area, click Add. The Add Config pane displays.

4. From the Config Type list box, select Flags.

5. From the Key list box, select Enable Storage Account Infra Encryption.

6. From the Value list box, select true.

7. Click Submit.

The Key/Value pair configuration is displayed in the System Configs area.

When you use autoscaling for Azure agent pools, you allow DuploCloud to manage your application's capacity requirements within your limits.

Creating an autoscaled Azure agent pool

In the DuploCloud Portal, create an Azure agent pool with the Enable Autoscaling option selected. Each agent pool contains nodes backed by the virtual host machines.

Create Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots in the DuploCloud Portal.

Creating a Virtual Machine(VM) Host Snapshot

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Cloud Services -> Hosts. The Hosts page displays.

2. Select the Host you want to backup from the Name column.

3. Click Actions and select Snapshot.

Using VM Snapshot as an Image for creating a new host

Once you take a VM Snapshot, the snapshot displays as an available Image Id when you create a Host.

Once we have the Infrastructure (Networking, Kubernetes cluster, and other common configurations) and an environment (Tenant) set up, the next step is to create VMs. These could be meant for:

• AKS Worker Nodes

• Worker Nodes (Docker Hosts) if built-in container orchestration is used.

• Regular nodes that are not part of any container orchestration, where a user manually connects and installs applications. For example, when using a Microsoft SQL Server in a VM, when running an IIS application and in other custom use cases.

Adding a Host (VM)

Add a Virtual Machine Host. DuploCloud AWS supports Host (Azure Host) and BYOH (Bring Your Own Host) types. Use BYOH for any VM that is not an Azure Host.

1. Ensure you have selected the appropriate Tenant from the Tenant list box at the top of the DuploCloud Portal.

2. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Cloud Services -> Hosts.

3. Select the tab that corresponds to the type of Host you want to create (HOST or BYOH), and click Add.

1. In the Friendly Name field, specify a unique name for the Host.

2. Define the Subnet, select the Instance Type, enter your Username and Password, and specify whether to enable a Public IP.

3. Optionally, enter a computer name in Computer Name field in the Advanced Options.

4. In the Encryption list box, select Off or On.

5. Optionally, select the Disk Controller Type in the Advanced Options. The disk controller type is set to SCSI by default. If you select NVME, specify the supported instance size.

6. Optionally, select Standard or Trusted Launch in the Security Type field. If you select Trusted Launch, enable or disable Enable Secure Boot and vTPM.

7. Click Add.

Viewing Hosts (VMs)

To view your Hosts (VMs), navigate to Cloud Services -> Hosts and select the Host tab.

Creating Kubernetes StorageClass and PVC constructs in the DuploCloud Portal.

See Kubernetes StorageClass and PVC.

Host abstraction and isolation

While lower-level details such as IAM roles and security groups are abstracted, deriving instead from the Tenant, only the most application-centric inputs are required to set up Hosts.

Most of these inputs are optional and some are available as list box selections, set by the administrator in the Plan (for example, Image ID, in Host Advanced Options).

There are two additional parameters

Fleet: This is applicable if the VM is to be used as a host for container orchestration by the platform. The choices are:

• Linux Docker/Native: To be used for hosting Linux containers using the Built-in Container orchestration.

• Docker Windows: To be used for hosting Windows containers using the Built-in Container orchestration.

• None: To be used for non-Container Orchestration purposes and contents inside the VM are self-managed by the user.

Allocation Tags (Optional): If the VM is used for containers, you can optionally set a label on the VM. This label is specified during Docker application deployment to ensure that the application containers are pinned to a specific set of nodes, giving you the ability to split a tenant further into separate pools of servers and deploy applications on them.

Managing Tenant Expiration

In the DuploCloud Portal, configure an expiration time for a Tenant. At the set expiration time, the Tenant and associated resources are deleted.

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Administrator -> Tenants. The Tenants page displays.

2. From the Name column, select the Tenant for which you want to configure an expiration time.
3. From the Actions list box, select Set Tenant Expiration. The Tenant - Set Tenant Expiration pane displays.
4. Select the date and time (using your local time zone) when you want the Tenant to expire.

5. Click Set. At the configured day and time, the Tenant and associated resources will be deleted.

All the activity in the DuploCloud is logged which can be used for auditing. All the logs are saved into Elasticsearch and can be visualized in Kibana. The URL for the Kibana is available under Diagnostics.

The Elasticsearch & Kibana will be sitting inside the VPC and cannot be accessed from outside. Connect to the VPN and access these URL.

Introduction

Faults that happen in the system be it Infrastructure creation, Container deployments, or Application health checks can be tracked in the DuploCloud portal under Faults Menu.

Viewing faults

You can look at Tenant specific faults under Observability -> Faults or all the faults in the system under Administrator -> Faults. In addition to notifying you about the faults, DuploCloud integrates with Sentry, which will send an Email alert for the fault and act as a single place to look at all the events.

Creating alerts

You can create Azure alerts for the resources from the DuploCloud portal. The supported resource has Alerts Tab. Click on Add. Metrics are listed as per the resource. Select the required Threshold and configure the Alerts.

Alerts can also be configured from the Observability -> Alerts option.

When the alert Threshold is crossed, a Fault is generated in the DuploCloud portal.

In addition to the visibility of faults in the UI, DuploCloud also supports sending these notifications to the following systems:

• Sentry

• PagerDuty

• NewRelic

• AWS WorkDocs

• OpsGenie

Refer to the link here for the detailed configuration.

Organization of use cases

Topics in this section are covered in the order of typical usage. Use cases that are foundational to DuploCloud such as Infrastructure, Tenant, and Hosts are listed at the beginning of this section; while supporting use cases such as Logs, Metrics, and Faults and alerts appear near the end.

Supported use cases for DuploCloud Azure

• Infrastructure and Plan

• Tenant

• Hosts

• Autoscaling for Hosts

• VM Scale Sets

• Logs

• Metrics

• Faults and alerts

• Azure Portal link

• Cost management for billing

Metrics of the resources created/managed in DuploCloud can be tracked under Observability -> Metrics.

Separate tabs are available to view the metrics resource type wise.

Enabling the billing feature

To enable the billing feature in the Azure Console:

1. In the Azure Console, select the host (VM) beginning with DuploMaster.
2. In the Azure Console, navigate to Security -> Identity.

3. Click Azure role assignments. The Azure role assignments page displays.

4. Click Add role assignment (Preview) to add the Billing Reader role.
5. Restart the DuploMaster VM to make the Billing Reader role available.

6. Verify that Duplo.BillingService is running. If it is, the billing feature is enabled.

Usage costs for resources can be viewed and managed in the DuploCloud Portal, by month or week, and by Tenant. You can also explore historical resource costs.

To view the Billing page for Azure in the DuploCloud Portal, click Administrator -> Billing.

You can view usage by:

• Time

  • Select the Spend by Month tab and click More Details to display monthly and weekly spending options.

• Tenant

  • Select the Spend by Tenant tab.

Creating a direct link to the Azure Portal from your DuploCloud Infrastructure saves your time when you work with DuploCloud Azure resources. Instead of toggling between the DuploCloud Portal and the Microsoft Azure Portal, get instant access to the Azure Portal from DuploCloud.

Creating a link to the Azure Portal

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Administrator -> Infrastructure. The Infrastructure page displays.

2. From the Name column, select the Infrastructure for which you want to add a link to the Azure Console.

3. Click the Metadata tab.

4. Click Add. The Add Infrastructure Tag pane displays.

5. In the Key field, enter AzurePortalLink.
6. In the Value field, enter the URL for your Azure Portal.

7. Click Create.

Accessing the Azure Portal

1. In the DuploCloud Portal, navigate to Cloud Services -> Hosts. The Hosts page displays.

2. From the Name column, select the Host you are working with.

3. From the Actions menu, select Connect -> Azure Portal.