Quick Start with AKS 
Manage your AKS clusters with Meshery. Deploy Meshery inside your AKS cluster (in-cluster), or run it outside of AKS (out-of-cluster) and connect it to your cluster. Note: We recommend installing Meshery in your AKS clusters.
Prerequisites
- Install the Meshery command line client, mesheryctl.
- Install kubectl on your local machine.
- Install Azure CLI, configured for your environment.
- Access to an active AKS cluster in one of your resource groups.
Also see: Install Meshery on Kubernetes
Available Deployment Methods
In-cluster Installation
Follow the steps below to install Meshery in your AKS cluster.
Preflight Checks
Before you deploy Meshery on AKS, check the following.
Preflight: Cluster Connectivity
Use the Azure CLI to connect kubectl to your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster.
- Sign in to your Azure account with az login.
- Select the subscription that contains your AKS cluster:
az account set --subscription [SUBSCRIPTION_ID]
- Download the cluster’s credentials and make it your current context:
az aks get-credentials --resource-group [RESOURCE_GROUP] --name [AKS_SERVICE_NAME]
Installation: Using mesheryctl
With your AKS cluster as the current context, start Meshery on Kubernetes:
mesheryctl system start -p kubernetes
Meshery Server runs in the cluster and connects to it automatically, so you do not need to upload a kubeconfig. To connect a Meshery Server that runs elsewhere to this cluster, sign in with mesheryctl system login and run mesheryctl connection create --type aks, which prompts for the resource group and cluster name. (mesheryctl system config aks is deprecated.)
If mesheryctl reports an authentication error, sign in with mesheryctl system login. See Authenticate with Meshery via CLI.
Installation: Using Helm
To install Meshery with Helm 3, see the Helm Installation guide.
Post-Installation Steps
Optionally, verify the health of your Meshery deployment with mesheryctl system check.
You’re ready to use Meshery. Open Meshery UI in your browser.
Accessing Meshery UI
Once Meshery is running, mesheryctl system start opens Meshery UI in your default browser. On Docker, Meshery UI listens at http://localhost:9081 by default. On Kubernetes, mesheryctl opens the address of the meshery service in the meshery namespace, which the Helm chart creates as a LoadBalancer service on port 9081.
To open Meshery UI in your default browser at any time, run:
mesheryctl system dashboard
If your cluster does not give the meshery service a reachable address, forward a local port to Meshery instead. By default, mesheryctl listens on local port 9081; use -p to choose another port.
mesheryctl system dashboard --port-forward
You can also port-forward with kubectl:
kubectl port-forward svc/meshery 9081:9081 --namespace meshery
Verify Kubernetes Connection
Whichever way you installed Meshery, verify that Meshery is connected to your cluster:- In the Meshery UI, navigate to Lifecycle from the menu on the left.
- Select Connections.
- Ensure that your cluster appears in the list of connections and is marked as
Connected. - Click the cluster name to run a connectivity test and confirm that Meshery can reach your cluster.
Customizing Your Meshery Provider Callback URL
You can customize the callback URL that your Meshery Provider redirects to after sign-in. This helps when Meshery runs behind several layers of networking infrastructure.
For production deployments, we recommend that you expose Meshery UI through a reverse proxy or a load balancer. A custom callback URL makes sure that sign-in completes even when requests pass through several routing layers.
Note: For production deployments, use a Remote Provider so that you control which identity providers can sign users in. Learn more about this in the Extensibility: Providers guide.
To set a custom callback URL, set the MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL environment variable when you start Meshery:
MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL=https://custom-host mesheryctl system start
On Kubernetes, Meshery UI is then available at the EXTERNAL-IP of the meshery service. Run kubectl get svc meshery -n meshery to find it.