Prerequisites

Azure Requirements

An Azure subscription with Contributor and User Access Administrator roles
(Optional) An Azure DNS zone for external ingress with TLS

Required Tools

Tool	Version	Purpose
Azure CLI (`az`)	Latest	Azure resource management
Azure Developer CLI (`azd`)	Latest	Deployment orchestration
Terraform	>= 1.12	Infrastructure as Code
Helm	>= 3.x	Kubernetes package management
kubectl	Latest	Kubernetes CLI
kubelogin	Latest	Azure AD auth for AKS
PowerShell (`pwsh`)	>= 7.4	Lifecycle hook scripts

Verification

Confirm all tools are installed and you are authenticated:

# Check tool versions
az version
azd version
terraform version
helm version
kubectl version --client
pwsh --version

# Authenticate
az login
azd auth login

Feature Flags (One-Time)

If using Istio CNI chaining (required for sidecar injection on AKS Automatic), register the preview feature flag:

az feature register --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService --name IstioCNIPreview
az provider register -n Microsoft.ContainerService

This is a one-time operation per Azure subscription.