| title | description | ms.service | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author | author |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Snapshot Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) node pools |
Learn how to snapshot AKS cluster node pools and create clusters and node pools from a snapshot. |
container-service |
article |
09/11/2020 |
jpalma |
palma21 |
AKS releases a new node image weekly and every new cluster, new node pool, or upgrade cluster will always receive the latest image that can make it hard to maintain your environments consistent and to have repeatable environments.
Node pool snapshots allow you to take a configuration snapshot of your node pool and then create new node pools or new clusters based of that snapshot for as long as that configuration and kubernetes version is supported. For more information on the supportability windows, see Supported Kubernetes versions in AKS.
The snapshot is an Azure resource that will contain the configuration information from the source node pool such as the node image version, kubernetes version, OS type, and OS SKU. You can then reference this snapshot resource and the respective values of its configuration to create any new node pool or cluster based off of it.
This article assumes that you have an existing AKS cluster. If you need an AKS cluster, see the AKS quickstart using the Azure CLI, using Azure PowerShell, or using the Azure portal.
- Any node pool or cluster created from a snapshot must use a VM from the same virtual machine family as the snapshot, for example, you can't create a new N-Series node pool based of a snapshot captured from a D-Series node pool because the node images in those cases are structurally different.
- Snapshots must be created and used in the same region as the source node pool.
In order to take a snapshot from a node pool first you'll need the node pool resource ID, which you can get from the command below:
NODEPOOL_ID=$(az aks nodepool show --name nodepool1 --cluster-name myAKSCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup --query id -o tsv)
Important
Your AKS node pool must be created or upgraded after Nov 10th, 2021 in order for a snapshot to be taken from it.
If you are using the aks-preview Azure CLI extension version 0.5.59 or newer, the commands for node pool snapshot have changed. For updated commands, see the Node Pool Snapshot CLI reference.
Now, to take a snapshot from the previous node pool you'll use the az aks snapshot CLI command.
az aks snapshot create --name MySnapshot --resource-group MyResourceGroup --nodepool-id $NODEPOOL_ID --location eastus
First you'll need the resource ID from the snapshot that was previously created, which you can get from the command below:
SNAPSHOT_ID=$(az aks snapshot show --name MySnapshot --resource-group myResourceGroup --query id -o tsv)
Now, we can use the command below to add a new node pool based off of this snapshot.
az aks nodepool add --name np2 --cluster-name myAKSCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup --snapshot-id $SNAPSHOT_ID
You can upgrade a node pool to a snapshot configuration so long as the snapshot kubernetes version and node image version are more recent than the versions in the current node pool.
First you'll need the resource ID from the snapshot that was previously created, which you can get from the command below:
SNAPSHOT_ID=$(az aks snapshot show --name MySnapshot --resource-group myResourceGroup --query id -o tsv)
Now, we can use this command to upgrade this node pool to this snapshot configuration.
az aks nodepool upgrade --name nodepool1 --cluster-name myAKSCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup --snapshot-id $SNAPSHOT_ID
Note
Your node pool image version will be the same contained in the snapshot and will remain the same throughout every scale operation. However, if this node pool is upgraded or a node image upgrade is performed without providing a snapshot-id the node image will be upgraded to latest.
When you create a cluster from a snapshot, the cluster original system pool will be created from the snapshot configuration.
First you'll need the resource ID from the snapshot that was previously created, which you can get from the command below:
SNAPSHOT_ID=$(az aks snapshot show --name MySnapshot --resource-group myResourceGroup --query id -o tsv)
Now, we can use this command to create this cluster off of the snapshot configuration.
az aks create --name myAKSCluster2 --resource-group myResourceGroup --snapshot-id $SNAPSHOT_ID
- See the AKS release notes for information about the latest node images.
- Learn how to upgrade the Kubernetes version with Upgrade an AKS cluster.
- Learn how to upgrade you node image version with Node Image Upgrade
- Learn more about multiple node pools and how to upgrade node pools with Create and manage multiple node pools.