In the last post, we connected a local Kubernetes cluster to Azure using Azure Arc so that we could manage it from the Azure portal.

Which is cool, but if all we do is stare at our cluster from Azure, we are missing the fun part.

What I really want from this setup is the ability to run workloads locally that can authenticate to Azure resources in the same way they would in a “real” environment, without me having to stuff secrets into config files or pass credentials around by hand.

Over the last few years, my focus at work has migrated away from Intune and device management to software engineering and the management of cloud native technologies.

This, to the surprise of no one, has been a steep learning curve. One of the big challenges I’ve faced is how to test and develop applications locally in an environment that mimics the production environments that the software will eventually run in.