[SKIP] Launch EKS

The EKS Cluster has already been created for you. Please skip this step and move on to the next. Please feel free to read through the page to learn how the cluster was created.

DO NOT PROCEED with this step unless you have validated the IAM role in use by the Cloud9 IDE. You will not be able to run the necessary kubectl commands in the later modules unless the EKS cluster is built using the IAM role.

Challenge:

How do I check the IAM role on the workspace?

Expand here to see the solution

Create an EKS cluster

eksctl version must be 0.38.0 or above to deploy EKS 1.19, click here to get the latest version.

Create a CMK for the EKS cluster to use when encrypting your Kubernetes secrets:

aws kms create-alias --alias-name alias/eksworkshop --target-key-id $(aws kms create-key --query KeyMetadata.Arn --output text)

Let’s retrieve the ARN of the CMK to input into the create cluster command.

export MASTER_ARN=$(aws kms describe-key --key-id alias/eksworkshop --query KeyMetadata.Arn --output text)

We set the MASTER_ARN environment variable to make it easier to refer to the KMS key later.

Now, let’s save the MASTER_ARN environment variable into the bash_profile

echo "export MASTER_ARN=${MASTER_ARN}" | tee -a ~/.bash_profile

Create an eksctl deployment file (eksworkshop.yaml) use in creating your cluster using the following syntax:

cat << EOF > eksworkshop.yaml
---
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: eksworkshop-eksctl
  region: ${AWS_REGION}
  version: "1.19"

availabilityZones: ["${AZS[0]}", "${AZS[1]}", "${AZS[2]}"]

managedNodeGroups:
- name: nodegroup
  desiredCapacity: 3
  instanceType: t3.small
  ssh:
    enableSsm: true

# To enable all of the control plane logs, uncomment below:
# cloudWatch:
#  clusterLogging:
#    enableTypes: ["*"]

secretsEncryption:
  keyARN: ${MASTER_ARN}
EOF

Next, use the file you created as the input for the eksctl cluster creation.

We are deliberatly launching at least one Kubernetes version behind the latest available on Amazon EKS. This allows you to perform the cluster upgrade lab.

eksctl create cluster -f eksworkshop.yaml

Launching EKS and all the dependencies will take approximately 15 minutes