You can add an existing Azure Kubernetes Service cluster and then manage it using KKP.
Navigate to External Clusters page.
Click Import External Cluster button.

Azure Kubernetes Cluster provider.
Select a pre-created preset which stores the provider specific credentials.
Manually enter the credentials Tenant ID, Subscription ID, Client ID and Client Secret.
The credentials should provide access rights to read & write Azure Kubernetes Service and list cluster admin credential, in order to fetch kubeconfig using API. Learn about Authorize Resource Group
Validation performed will only check if the credentials have Read access.

Import Cluster button. Clusters can be imported only once in a single project. The same cluster can be imported in multiple projects.
Admin can create a preset on a KKP cluster using KKP Admin Panel.
This Preset can then be used to Create/Import an AKS cluster.
Admin Panel from the menu.
Provider Presets Page and Click on + Create Preset button.

Azure Kubernetes Service from the list of providers.
Create button.

After the cluster is added, the KKP controller retrieves the cluster kubeconfig to display all necessary information.
A healthy cluster has Running state. Otherwise, the cluster can be in the Error state. Move the mouse cursor over the state indicator to get more details.

You can also expand Events to get information from the controller.

You can click on Machine Deployments to get the details:

When an upgrade for the cluster is available, a little dropdown arrow will be shown beside the Control Plane Version on the cluster’s page.
To start the upgrade, choose the desired version from the list of available upgrade versions and click on Change Version.


If the version upgrade is valid, the cluster state will change to Reconciling.
Only one operation can be performed at one point of time. If the replica count is updated then Kubernetes version upgrade will be disabled and vice versa.
Navigate to the cluster overview, scroll down to machine deployments.
Click on the edit icon next to the machine deployment you want to edit.

Upgrade Kubernetes Version. Select the Kubernetes Version from the dropdown to upgrade the machine deployment.
Scale the replicas: In the popup dialog, you can increase or decrease the number of worker nodes that are managed by this machine deployment.

Delete operation is not allowed for imported clusters
Delete cluster operation allows to delete the cluster from the Provider. Click on the Delete button.

At least one systempool is required in an AKS cluster.
Navigate to the cluster overview, scroll down to machine deployments and click on the delete icon next to the machine deployment you want to delete.

Provisioning State is used to indicate AKS Cluster State
This represents the state of the last operation attempted on this node pool, such as scaling the number of nodes or upgrading the Kubernetes version. The nodes may still be running even if this state is showing as ‘Failed’. Check previous operations on the node pool to resolve any failures.
If the cluster is stopped from the Azure side, you will be able to see the current state of the cluster as stopped. Cluster details will not be visible as the details are fetched using kubeconfig, and the kubeconfig is not available for the stopped cluster.
