As of now, there is no direct option in the Azure AKS console to restart an AKS cluster. But this operation can be easily performed using the Azure Command Line.

The steps to authenticate and generate the credentials using Azure Command Line is explained in this post.

There is no direct restart option. We have to perform a stop operation first and then start operation. After authenticating and connecting to the correct subscription. execute the following steps.

Note: AKS will retain the deployments and services on the cluster on reboot. The cluster state of a stopped cluster is preserved for a period of max 12 months. This means, the services and deployments in the cluster will get restored automatically on starting on the cluster if the stop period is less than 12 months.

How to Stop an AKS cluster using Azure CLI ?

The command to stop AKS cluster is given below. This action will stop your control plane and agent nodes altogether.

az aks stop --name AKSCLusterName --resource-group resourceGroupName

The stop activity may take few seconds to several minutes depending upon the size of the cluster and number of deployments in the cluster.

How to Start an AKS cluster using Azure CLI ?

The command to start AKS cluster is given below. This action will start the control plane and the agent nodes. This will take a couple of minutes.

az aks start --name AKSCLusterName --resource-group resourceGroupName

Common Error or issues

You may get the following error while trying to stop or start the AKS using Azure CLI.

az aks: ‘stop’ is not in the ‘az aks’ command group.

az aks: ‘start’ is not in the ‘az aks’ command group.

This issue can be fixed by enabling the following extension. The command is given below.

az extension add --name aks-preview

I hope this article is helpful. Please let me know if you are facing any issues. Happy reading 🙂

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