Tool:az_aks_operations

Unified tool for managing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters and related operations.

Available Operations:

• Read-Only (all access levels):

  • show: Show cluster details
  • list: List clusters in subscription/resource group
  • get-versions: Get available Kubernetes versions
  • check-network: Perform outbound network connectivity check
  • nodepool-list: List node pools in cluster
  • nodepool-show: Show node pool details
  • account-list: List Azure subscriptions

• Read-Write (readwrite/admin access levels):

  • create: Create new cluster
  • delete: Delete cluster
  • scale: Scale cluster node count
  • start: Start a stopped cluster
  • stop: Stop a running cluster
  • update: Update cluster configuration
  • upgrade: Upgrade Kubernetes version
  • nodepool-add: Add node pool to cluster
  • nodepool-delete: Delete node pool
  • nodepool-scale: Scale node pool
  • nodepool-upgrade: Upgrade node pool
  • account-set: Set active subscription
  • login: Azure authentication

• Admin-Only (admin access level):

  • get-credentials: Get cluster credentials for kubectl access

Tool:az_network_resources

Unified tool for getting Azure network resource information used by AKS clusters.

Available Resource Types:

• all: Get information about all network resources
• vnet: Virtual Network information
• subnet: Subnet information
• nsg: Network Security Group information
• route_table: Route Table information
• load_balancer: Load Balancer information
• private_endpoint: Private endpoint information

Tool:az_monitoring

Unified tool for Azure monitoring and diagnostics operations for AKS clusters.

Available Operations:

• metrics: List metric values for resources
• resource_health: Retrieve resource health events for AKS clusters
• app_insights: Execute KQL queries against Application Insights telemetry data
• diagnostics: Check if AKS cluster has diagnostic settings configured
• control_plane_logs: Query AKS control plane logs with safety constraintsand time range validation

Tool:get_aks_vmss_info

• Get detailed VMSS configuration for node pools in the AKS cluster

Tool:az_compute_operations

Unified tool for managing Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) used by AKS.

Available Operations:

• show: Get details of a VM/VMSS
• list: List VMs/VMSS in subscription or resource group
• get-instance-view: Get runtime status
• start: Start VM
• stop: Stop VM
• restart: Restart VM/VMSS instances
• reimage: Reimage VMSS instances (VM not supported for reimage)

Resource Types:vm (single virtual machines),vmss (virtual machine scale sets)

Tool:az_fleet

Comprehensive Azure Fleet management for multi-cluster scenarios.

Available Operations:

• Fleet Operations: list, show, create, update, delete, get-credentials
• Member Operations: list, show, create, update, delete
• Update Run Operations: list, show, create, start, stop, delete
• Update Strategy Operations: list, show, create, delete
• ClusterResourcePlacement Operations: list, show, get, create, delete

Supports both Azure Fleet management and Kubernetes ClusterResourcePlacementCRD operations.

Tool:list_detectors

• List all available AKS cluster detectors

Tool:run_detector

• Run a specific AKS diagnostic detector

Tool:run_detectors_by_category

• Run all detectors in a specific category
• Categories: Best Practices, Cluster and Control Plane Availability andPerformance, Connectivity Issues, Create/Upgrade/Delete and Scale,Deprecations, Identity and Security, Node Health, Storage

Tool:az_advisor_recommendation

Retrieve and manage Azure Advisor recommendations for AKS clusters.

Available Operations:

• list: List recommendations with filtering options
• report: Generate recommendation reports
• Filter Options: resource_group, cluster_names, category (Cost,HighAvailability, Performance, Security), severity (High, Medium, Low)

Note: kubectl commands are available with all access levels. Additional toolsrequire explicit enablement via--additional-tools

kubectl Tools (Unified Interface):

• Read-Only (all access levels):

  • kubectl_resources: View resources (get, describe) - filtered to read-only operations in readonly mode
  • kubectl_diagnostics: Debug and diagnose (logs, events, top, exec, cp)
  • kubectl_cluster: Cluster information (cluster-info, api-resources, api-versions, explain)
  • kubectl_config: Configuration management (diff, auth, config) - filtered to read-only operations in readonly mode

• Read-Write/Admin (readwrite/admin access levels):

  • kubectl_resources: Full resource management (get, describe, create, delete, apply, patch, replace, cordon, uncordon, drain, taint)
  • kubectl_workloads: Workload lifecycle (run, expose, scale, autoscale, rollout)
  • kubectl_metadata: Metadata management (label, annotate, set)
  • kubectl_config: Full configuration management (diff, auth, certificate, config)

Additional Tools (Optional):

• helm: Helm package manager (requires--additional-tools helm)
• cilium: Cilium CLI for eBPF networking (requires--additional-tools cilium)

Tool:inspektor_gadget_observability

Real-time observability tool for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters usingeBPF.

Available Actions:

• deploy: Deploy Inspektor Gadget to cluster (requiresreadwrite/admin access)
• undeploy: Remove Inspektor Gadget from cluster (requiresreadwrite/admin access)
• is_deployed: Check deployment status
• run: Run one-shot gadgets
• start: Start continuous gadgets
• stop: Stop running gadgets
• get_results: Retrieve gadget results
• list_gadgets: List available gadgets

Available Gadgets:

• observe_dns: Monitor DNS requests and responses
• observe_tcp: Monitor TCP connections
• observe_file_open: Monitor file system operations
• observe_process_execution: Monitor process execution
• observe_signal: Monitor signal delivery
• observe_system_calls: Monitor system calls
• top_file: Top files by I/O operations
• top_tcp: Top TCP connections by traffic

Choose your platform and download the latest AKS-MCP binary:

After downloading, create a.vscode/mcp.json file in your workspace root with the path to your downloaded binary.

For quick setup, you can use these one-liner scripts that download the binaryand create the configuration:

Windows (PowerShell):

# Download binary and create VS Code configurationmkdir-p .vscode ;Invoke-WebRequest-Uri"https://github.com/Azure/aks-mcp/releases/latest/download/aks-mcp-windows-amd64.exe"-OutFile"aks-mcp.exe" ;@{servers=@{"aks-mcp-server"=@{type="stdio";command="$PWD\aks-mcp.exe";args=@("--transport","stdio")}}}|ConvertTo-Json-Depth3|Out-File".vscode/mcp.json"-Encoding UTF8

macOS/Linux (Bash):

# Download binary and create VS Code configurationmkdir -p .vscode&& curl -sL https://github.com/Azure/aks-mcp/releases/latest/download/aks-mcp-linux-amd64 -o aks-mcp&& chmod +x aks-mcp&&echo'{"servers":{"aks-mcp-server":{"type":"stdio","command":"'$PWD'/aks-mcp","args":["--transport","stdio"]}}}'> .vscode/mcp.json

✨ Simple Setup: Download the binary for your platform, then use the manual configuration below to set up the MCP server in VS Code.

You can configure the AKS-MCP server in two ways:

1. Workspace-specific configuration (recommended for project-specific usage):

Create a.vscode/mcp.json file in your workspace with the path to your downloaded binary:

{"servers": {"aks-mcp-server": {"type":"stdio","command":"<enter the file path>","args": ["--transport","stdio"      ]    }  }}

2. User-level configuration (persistent across all workspaces):

For a persistent configuration that works across all your VS Code workspaces, add the MCP server to your VS Code user settings:

1. Open VS Code Settings (Ctrl+, or Cmd+,)
2. Search for "mcp" in the settings
3. Add the following to your User Settings JSON:

{"github.copilot.chat.mcp.servers": {"aks-mcp-server": {"type":"stdio","command":"<enter the file path>","args": ["--transport","stdio"      ]    }  }}

1. If running on an older version of VS Code: restart VS Code i.e. close andreopen VS Code to load the new MCP server configuration.
2. Open GitHub Copilot in VS Code andswitch to Agent mode
3. Click theTools button or run /list in the Github Copilot window to see the list of available tools
4. You should see the AKS-MCP tools in the list
5. Try a prompt like:"List all my AKS clusters in subscription xxx"
6. The agent will automatically use AKS-MCP tools to complete your request

💡 Tip: If you don't see the AKS-MCP tools after restarting, check the VS Code output panel for any MCP server connection errors and verify your binary path in.vscode/mcp.json.

Note: Ensure you have authenticated with Azure CLI (az login) for the server to access your Azure resources.

For other MCP-compatible AI clients likeClaude Desktop, configure the server in your MCP configuration:

{"mcpServers": {"aks": {"command":"<path of binary aks-mcp>","args": ["--transport","stdio"      ]    }  }}

You can enable theAKS-MCP server directly from MCP Toolkit:

1. Open Docker Desktop
2. Click "MCP Toolkit" in the left sidebar
3. Search for "aks" in Catalog tab
4. Click on the AKS-MCP server card
5. Enable the server by clicking "+" in the top right corner
6. Configure the server using "Configuration" tab:
   • azure_dir[REQUIRED]: Path to your Azure credentials directory e.g/home/user/.azure (must be absolute – without$HOME or~)
   • kubeconfig[REQUIRED]: Path to your kubeconfig file e.g/home/user/.kube/config (must be absolute – without$HOME or~)
   • access_level[REQUIRED]: Set toreadonly,readwrite, oradmin as needed
   • container_user[OPTIONAL]: Username or UID to run the container as (default ismcp), e.g. use1000 to match your host user ID (see note below). Only needed if you are using docker engine on Linux.
7. You are now ready to use the AKS-MCP server with yourpreferred MCP client, see an examplehere. (requires>= v0.16.0 for MCP gateway)

Note: When running the MCP gateway using Docker Engine, you have to set thecontainer_user to match your host user ID (e.g usingid -u) to ensure proper file permissions for accessing mounted volumes.On Docker Desktop, this is handled automatically if you usedesktop-* contexts, confirmed by runningdocker context ls.

OnWindows, the Azure credentials won't work by default, but you have two options:

1. Long-lived servers: Configure theMCP gateway to use long-lived servers using--long-lived flag and then authenticate with Azure CLI in the container, see option B in Containerized MCP configuration below on how to fetch credentials inside the container.

2. Custom Azure Directory: Set up a custom Azure directory:

   # Set custom Azure config directory$env:AZURE_CONFIG_DIR="$env:USERPROFILE\.azure-for-docker"# Disable token cache encryption (to match behavior with Linux/macOS)$env:AZURE_CORE_ENCRYPT_TOKEN_CACHE="false"# Login to Azure CLIaz login

   This will store the credentials in$env:USERPROFILE\.azure-for-docker (e.g.C:\Users\<username>\.azure-for-docker),use this path in the AKS-MCP server configurationazure_dir.

You can also use theMCP Gateway to enable the AKS-MCP server directly using:

# Enable AKS-MCP server in Docker MCP Gatewaydocker mcp serverenable aks

Note: You still need to configure the server (e.g. usingdocker mcp config) with your Azure credentials, kubeconfig file, and access level.

For containerized deployment, you can run AKS-MCP server using the official Docker image:

Option A: Mount credentials from host (recommended):

{"mcpServers": {"aks": {"type":"stdio","command":"docker","args": ["run","-i","--rm","--user","<your-user-id (e.g. id -u)>","-v","~/.azure:/home/mcp/.azure","-v","~/.kube:/home/mcp/.kube","ghcr.io/azure/aks-mcp:latest","--transport","stdio"        ]    }  }}

Option B: fetch the credentials inside the container:

{"mcpServers": {"aks": {"type":"stdio","command":"docker","args": ["run","-i","--rm","ghcr.io/azure/aks-mcp:latest","--transport","stdio"        ]    }  }}

Start the MCP server container first per above command, and then run the following commands to fetch the credentials:

• Login to Azure CLI:docker exec -it <container-id> az login --use-device-code
• Get kubeconfig:docker exec -it <container-id> az aks get-credentials -g <resource-group> -n <cluster-name>

Note that:

• Host Azure CLI logins don’t automatically propagate into containers without mounting~/.azure.
• User ID should be set for option A, orelse the mcp user inside container won't be able to access the mounted files.

You can configure any MCP-compatible client to use the AKS-MCP server by running the binary directly:

# Run the server directly./aks-mcp --transport stdio

For direct binary usage without package managers:

1. Download the latest release from thereleases page
2. Extract the binary to your preferred location
3. Make it executable (on Unix systems):

   chmod +x aks-mcp

4. Configure your MCP client to use the binary path