I've got a web app deployed to AKS and it's generally up and running fine. I am now trying to extend its functionality by adding access to Azure sql.

We are using VSTS/Azure DevOps for deployment.

I've deployed a secret to the cluster using the command:

kubectl secret generic sampleapp-appsettings --from-literal=DBConnectionString="$(var_DBConnectionString)"

I've checked the cluster from the kubernetes dashboard and can see it has been deployed as expected. The secret is a connection string to the database

However, I'm struggling to retrieve the secret from the deployed pods. I've created an environment variable for ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT, with a value for Kubernetes.

Here's part of my deployment yaml:

    spec:
  containers:
  - name: sampleapp-services
    image: sampleapp.azurecr.io/sampleapp-services:latest
    imagePullPolicy: Always          
    env:
    - name: "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT"
      value: "Kubernetes"
    - name: services-appsettings
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: services-appsettings
          key: DBConnectionString          
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80 

I've added an api endpoint to my app for the purposes of debugging and can see that the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT value is being pull correctly.

however, the DBConnectionString value isn't being correctly pull from the kubernetes secret. instead it's being retrieved from the appsettings.json file. I've got some code in my app which is just outputting the values:

        [HttpGet("settings")]
    public ActionResult<string> GetAppSettings()
    {
        var message = 
quot;Host: {Environment.MachineName}\n" +
                      
quot;EnvironmentName: {_env.EnvironmentName}\n" +
                      
quot;Secret value: {_dataSettings.ConnectionString}";
        return message;
    }

in my DataSettings class I've got code like this:

 var value = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("DBConnectionString");

However, this isn't pulling back the secret value from the kubernetes cluster that I'm expecting.

I've followed some examples, like this - but they don't help.

blog

Has anyone got some simple step by step instructions/samples that might help?

thanks