Azure naming · Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters

aks AKS cluster

Azure Kubernetes Service managed cluster.

Naming constraints

CAF abbreviationaks
Resource typeMicrosoft.ContainerService/managedClusters
Length1–63 characters
CaseMixed case
Allowed charactersAlphanumerics, underscores, and hyphens. Start and end with alphanumeric.
Uniqueness Resource group
SeparatorHyphen
Watch out: AKS creates a node resource group named MC_<rg>_<cluster>_<region> (80-character limit). Long cluster and resource group names push that derived name over its limit.

Source: Microsoft Learn, “Naming rules and restrictions for Azure resources”, checked October 2026. Abbreviation from the Cloud Adoption Framework.

Example & copy-ready

A worked name for workload app, env prod, region weu, instance 001.

Example name
aks-app-prod-weu-001 Valid
Validation regex for CI checks or pre-commit hooks (.NET and JavaScript) 
^(?=.{1,63}$)[A-Za-z0-9](?:[A-Za-z0-9_-]*[A-Za-z0-9])?$
Bicep naming expression 
var name = take('aks-${workload}-${env}-${region}-${instance}', 63)
Terraform local 
locals {
  name = substr(join("-", compact(["aks", var.workload, var.env, var.region, var.instance])), 0, 63)
}

Azure Policy can't evaluate regular expressions, so a policy can check the aks prefix but not the full format. Run the regex in your pipeline, or audit existing names on a schedule.

« Function app AKS node pool »

Uniqueness scope

Unique within the parent resource group. The same name can be reused in a different resource group.

Open in the name generator

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