AKS Cluster Configuration

Once you understand the fundamentals of AKS, the next step is configuring your cluster for production use. This lesson covers node pools, autoscaling, upgrades, identity management, and the configuration options that turn a basic cluster into a production-ready platform.

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Node Pools

Node pools are groups of virtual machines with the same configuration. AKS supports two types:

System Node Pools

System pools run essential Kubernetes components (CoreDNS, metrics-server, tunnelfront). Every cluster must have at least one system pool.

Best practices:

• Use a small, reliable VM size (e.g. Standard_D4s_v5)
• Set a minimum of 2–3 nodes for high availability
• Apply a CriticalAddonsOnly=true:NoSchedule taint to prevent application workloads from running on system nodes

User Node Pools

User pools run your application workloads. You can create multiple pools with different characteristics:

# Add a GPU node pool for ML workloads
az aks nodepool add \
  --resource-group rg-aks \
  --cluster-name my-aks-cluster \
  --name gpupool \
  --node-count 2 \
  --node-vm-size Standard_NC6s_v3 \
  --labels workload=gpu