/azure-diagnostics

General AKS Investigation & Diagnostics

"What happened in my cluster?"

When a user asks a broad question like "what happened in my AKS cluster?" or "check my AKS status", follow this systematic flow:

1. Cluster health
2. Recent events
3. Node status
4. Unhealthy pods
5. All pods overview
6. System pods health
7. Activity log

Run the aks-baseline script instead of issuing these commands one by one. It performs the entire read-only sweep above and prints a single labeled digest (provisioning state, node pool summary, recent activity log, node readiness, unhealthy pods, kube-system health, and recent warning events), so you get one summarized result instead of seven raw dumps.

# bash
./scripts/aks-baseline.sh -g <rg> -n <cluster> [--namespace <ns>]

# PowerShell
.\scripts\aks-baseline.ps1 -ResourceGroup <rg> -Cluster <cluster> [-Namespace <ns>]

After reviewing the digest, deep-dive into a specific pod with kubectl describe / kubectl logs.

AKS CLI Tools

# Get cluster credentials (required before kubectl commands)
az aks get-credentials -g <rg> -n <cluster>

# View node pools
az aks nodepool list -g <rg> --cluster-name <cluster> -o table

AppLens (MCP) for AKS

For AI-powered diagnostics:

mcp_azure_mcp_applens
  intent: "diagnose AKS cluster issues"
  command: "diagnose"
  parameters:
    resourceId: "/subscriptions/<sub>/resourceGroups/<rg>/providers/Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters/<cluster>"

💡 Tip: AppLens automatically detects common issues and provides remediation recommendations using the cluster resource ID.

Best Practices

1. Start with kubectl get/describe - Always check basic status first
2. Check events - kubectl get events -A reveals recent issues
3. Use systematic isolation - Pod -> Node -> Cluster -> Network
4. Document changes - Note what you tried and what worked
5. Escalate when needed - For control plane issues, contact Azure support