Deploy Docker image to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

17 Feb 20264 minutes to read

Host the Syncfusion PDF Viewer server container on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to deliver PDFs to the TypeScript PDF Viewer client at scale. The following workflow provisions the infrastructure, deploys the published image from Docker Hub, and exposes a public endpoint for the component’s serviceUrl.

Prerequisites

  • Azure subscription and Azure CLI installed. See the Install the Azure CLI guide.
  • Sign in to Azure before you create resources.
az login

Ensure the AKS nodes can pull the syncfusion/pdfviewerserver:latest image from Docker Hub or from a private registry mirror if outbound internet access is restricted.

Deploy the PDF Viewer server

The following steps create the resource group, cluster, and networking assets used by the PDF Viewer server. Replace resource names if you deploy to an existing namespace or use regional naming conventions.

Step 1: Create a resource group for AKS resources.

az group create --name pdfviewerresourcegroup --location "East US"

Step 2: Create an AKS cluster in the default namespace.

az aks create --resource-group pdfviewerresourcegroup --name pdfviewercluster --node-count 1

Step 3: Connect to the cluster.

Install kubectl and download the credentials for the resource group. If you use a custom namespace, append --namespace <name> to subsequent kubectl commands.

az aks install-cli
az aks get-credentials --resource-group pdfviewerresourcegroup --name pdfviewercluster

Step 4: Create services and deployments.

Create a pdfviewer-server.yaml file that defines the Deployment and Service required to expose the container by using a public LoadBalancer.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: pdfviewerserver
  name: pdfviewerserver
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: pdfviewerserver
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: pdfviewerserver
    spec:
      containers:
        - image: syncfusion/pdfviewerserver:latest
          name: pdfviewerserver
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
          env:
            - name: SYNCFUSION_LICENSE_KEY
              value: "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY"
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    app: pdfviewerserver
  name: pdfviewerserver
spec:
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: pdfviewerserver
  type: LoadBalancer

Security note: Store SYNCFUSION_LICENSE_KEY in an Azure Key Vault secret or Kubernetes Secret and reference it from the pod manifest instead of hard-coding the value in source control.

Step 5: Apply the configuration and get the external IP.

kubectl apply -f ./pdfviewer-server.yaml
kubectl get all

It can take several minutes for Azure to provision the LoadBalancer IP. When the external IP is available, browse to http://<external-ip>/api/pdfviewer to verify the default GET response. Enable HTTPS with an ingress controller or Azure Front Door for production workloads.

Step 6: Connect the client to the server endpoint.

Use the service endpoint (for example, https://<external-ip-or-dns>/api/pdfviewer) as the client’s serviceUrl. See the PDF Viewer getting-started guide for client configuration: https://help.syncfusion.com/document-processing/pdf/pdf-viewer/javascript-es6/getting-started/

For guidance on production deployments and AKS configuration, see the Azure Kubernetes Service walkthrough: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/aks/kubernetes-walkthrough