Installing or updating eksctl

This topic helps you install or update eksctl, a simple command line tool for creating and managing Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EKS. Eksctl provides the fastest and easiest way to create a new cluster with nodes for Amazon EKS. For more information and to see the official documentation, see https://eksctl.io/.

Prerequisite

The kubectl command line tool is installed on your device or AWS CloudShell. The version can be the same as or up to one minor version earlier or later than the Kubernetes version of your cluster. For example, if your cluster version is 1.22, you can use kubectl version 1.21,1.22, or 1.23 with it. To install or upgrade kubectl, see Installing or updating kubectl.

To install or update eksctl

1. Determine whether you already have eksctl installed on your device.

   eksctl version
   

   If you have eksctl installed in the path of your device, the example output is as follows. If you want to update the version that you currently have installed with a later version, complete the next step, making sure to install the new version in the same location that your current version is in.

   0.112.0

   If you receive no output, then you either don't have eksctl installed, or it's not installed in a location that's in your device's path.

2. You can install eksctl on macOS, Linux, or Windows

   macOS

   To install or update eksctl on macOS

   The easiest way to get started with Amazon EKS and macOS is by installing eksctl with Homebrew, an open-source tool that can be installed using these instructions. The eksctl Homebrew recipe installs eksctl and any other dependencies that are required for Amazon EKS, such as kubectl. The recipe also installs the aws-iam-authenticator, which is required if you don't have the AWS CLI version 1.16.156 or higher installed.

   1. If you do not already have Homebrew installed on macOS, install it with the following command.

      /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
      

   2. Install the Weaveworks Homebrew tap.

      brew tap weaveworks/tap
      

   3. Install or upgrade eksctl.

      • Install eksctl with the following command:

        brew install weaveworks/tap/eksctl
        

      • If eksctl is already installed, run the following command to upgrade:

        brew upgrade eksctl && brew link --overwrite eksctl
        

   4. Test that your installation was successful with the following command.

      eksctl version
      

      Note

      The GitTag version should be at least 0.112.0. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors, or manually download an archive of the release from https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/download/v0.112.0/eksctl_Darwin_amd64.tar.gz, extract eksctl, and then run it.

   Linux

   To install or update eksctl on Linux

   1. Download and extract the latest release of eksctl with the following command.

      curl --silent --location "https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$(uname -s)_amd64.tar.gz" | tar xz -C /tmp
      

   2. Move the extracted binary to /usr/local/bin.

      sudo mv /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin
      

   3. Test that your installation was successful with the following command.

      eksctl version
      

      Note

      The GitTag version should be at least 0.112.0. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors, or replace the address in step 1 with https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/download/v0.112.0/eksctl_Linux_amd64.tar.gz and complete steps 1-3 again.

   Windows

   To install or update eksctl on Windows

   1. If you do not already have Chocolatey installed on your Windows system, see Installing Chocolatey.

   2. Install or upgrade eksctl.

      • Install the binaries with the following command:

        choco install -y eksctl 
        

      • If they are already installed, run the following command to upgrade:

        choco upgrade -y eksctl 
        

   3. Test that your installation was successful with the following command.

      eksctl version
      

      Note

      The GitTag version should be at least 0.112.0. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors, or manually download an archive of the release from https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/download/v0.112.0/eksctl_Windows_amd64.zip, extract eksctl, and then run it.