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AWS Documentation » Amazon EKS » User Guide » Getting Started with Amazon EKS » Getting Started with eksctl

Getting Started with eksctl

This getting started guide helps you to install all of the required resources to get started with Amazon EKS using eksctl, a simple command line utility for creating and managing Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EKS. At the end of this tutorial, you will have a running Amazon EKS cluster with worker nodes, and the kubectl command line utility will be configured to use your new cluster.

Prerequisites

This section helps you to install and configure the binaries you need to create and manage an Amazon EKS cluster.

Install the Latest AWS CLI

To use kubectl with your Amazon EKS clusters, you must install a binary that can create the required client security token for cluster API server communication. The aws eks get-token command, available in version 1.16.232 or greater of the AWS CLI, supports client security token creation. To install or upgrade the AWS CLI, see Installing the AWS Command Line Interface in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

If you already have pip and a supported version of Python, you can install or upgrade the AWS CLI with the following command: 

pip install awscli --upgrade --user

Note

Your system's Python version must be 2.7.9 or greater. Otherwise, you receive hostname doesn't match errors with AWS CLI calls to Amazon EKS. For more information, see What are "hostname doesn't match" errors? in the Python Requests FAQ.

For more information about other methods of installing or upgrading the AWS CLI for your platform, see the following topics in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

If you are unable to install version 1.16.232 or greater of the AWS CLI on your system, you must ensure that the AWS IAM Authenticator for Kubernetes is installed on your system. For more information, see Installing aws-iam-authenticator.

Configure Your AWS CLI Credentials

Both eksctl and the AWS CLI require that you have AWS credentials configured in your environment. The aws configure command is the fastest way to set up your AWS CLI installation for general use. 

$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
Default region name [None]: us-west-2
Default output format [None]: json

When you type this command, the AWS CLI prompts you for four pieces of information: access key, secret access key, AWS Region, and output format. This information is stored in a profile (a collection of settings) named default. This profile is used unless you specify another one.

For more information, see Configuring the AWS CLI in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Install eksctl

This section helps you to install the eksctl command line utility. For more information, see the https://eksctl.io/.

Choose the tab below that best represents your client setup.

macOSLinuxWindows
macOS

To install or upgrade eksctl on macOS using Homebrew

The easiest way to get started with Amazon EKS and macOS is by installing eksctl with Homebrew. The eksctl Homebrew recipe installs eksctl and any other dependencies that are required for Amazon EKS, such as kubectl and the aws-iam-authenticator.

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

    /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

  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 0.5.1. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors.

Linux

To install or upgrade eksctl on Linux using curl

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

    curl --silent --location "https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/download/latest_release/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 0.5.1. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors.

Windows

To install or upgrade eksctl on Windows using Chocolatey

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

  2. Install or upgrade eksctl and the aws-iam-authenticator.

    • Install the binaries with the following command:

      chocolatey install -y eksctl aws-iam-authenticator

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

      chocolatey upgrade -y eksctl aws-iam-authenticator

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

    eksctl version

    Note

    The GitTag version should be at least 0.5.1. If not, check your terminal output for any installation or upgrade errors.

Install and Configure kubectl for Amazon EKS

Kubernetes uses the kubectl command-line utility for communicating with the cluster API server.

Note

If you used the preceding Homebrew instructions to install eksctl on macOS, then kubectl and the aws-iam-authenticator have already been installed on your system. You can skip to Create Your Amazon EKS Cluster and Worker Nodes.

To install kubectl for Amazon EKS

  • You have multiple options to download and install kubectl for your operating system.

    • The kubectl binary is available in many operating system package managers, and this option is often much easier than a manual download and install process. You can follow the instructions for your specific operating system or package manager in the Kubernetes documentation to install.

    • Amazon EKS also vends kubectl binaries that you can use that are identical to the upstream kubectl binaries with the same version. To install the Amazon EKS-vended binary for your operating system, see Installing kubectl.

Create Your Amazon EKS Cluster and Worker Nodes

Now you can create your Amazon EKS cluster and a worker node group with the eksctl command line utility.

To create your cluster and worker nodes with eksctl

This procedure assumes that you have installed eksctl, and that your eksctl version is at least 0.5.1. You can check your version with the following command: 

eksctl version

For more information on installing or upgrading eksctl, see Installing or Upgrading eksctl.

  1. Create your Amazon EKS cluster and worker nodes with the following command. Substitute the red text with your own values.

    Important

    Amazon EKS will deprecate Kubernetes version 1.11 on November 4th, 2019. On this day, you will no longer be able to create new 1.11 clusters, and all Amazon EKS clusters running Kubernetes version 1.11 will be updated to the latest available platform version of Kubernetes version 1.12. For more information, see Amazon EKS Version Deprecation.

    Kubernetes version 1.10 is no longer supported on Amazon EKS. You can no longer create new 1.10 clusters, and all existing Amazon EKS clusters running Kubernetes version 1.10 will eventually be automatically updated to the latest available platform version of Kubernetes version 1.11. For more information, see Amazon EKS Version Deprecation.

    Please update any 1.10 clusters to version 1.11 or higher in order to avoid service interruption. For more information, see Updating an Amazon EKS Cluster Kubernetes Version. 

    eksctl create cluster \
--name prod \
--version 1.14 \
--nodegroup-name standard-workers \
--node-type t3.medium \
--nodes 3 \
--nodes-min 1 \
--nodes-max 4 \
--node-ami auto

    Note

    For more information on the available options for eksctl create cluster, see the project README on GitHub or view the help page with the following command. 

    eksctl create cluster --help

    Output:

    [ℹ]  using region us-west-2
[ℹ]  setting availability zones to [us-west-2b us-west-2c us-west-2d]
[ℹ]  subnets for us-west-2b - public:192.168.0.0/19 private:192.168.96.0/19
[ℹ]  subnets for us-west-2c - public:192.168.32.0/19 private:192.168.128.0/19
[ℹ]  subnets for us-west-2d - public:192.168.64.0/19 private:192.168.160.0/19
[ℹ]  nodegroup "standard-workers" will use "ami-0923e4b35a30a5f53" [AmazonLinux2/1.12]
[ℹ]  creating EKS cluster "prod" in "us-west-2" region
[ℹ]  will create 2 separate CloudFormation stacks for cluster itself and the initial nodegroup
[ℹ]  if you encounter any issues, check CloudFormation console or try 'eksctl utils describe-stacks --region=us-west-2 --name=prod'
[ℹ]  building cluster stack "eksctl-prod-cluster"
[ℹ]  creating nodegroup stack "eksctl-prod-nodegroup-standard-workers"
[✔]  all EKS cluster resource for "prod" had been created
[✔]  saved kubeconfig as "/Users/ericn/.kube/config"
[ℹ]  adding role "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/eksctl-prod-nodegroup-standard-wo-NodeInstanceRole-IJP4S12W3020" to auth ConfigMap
[ℹ]  nodegroup "standard-workers" has 0 node(s)
[ℹ]  waiting for at least 1 node(s) to become ready in "standard-workers"
[ℹ]  nodegroup "standard-workers" has 2 node(s)
[ℹ]  node "ip-192-168-22-17.us-west-2.compute.internal" is not ready
[ℹ]  node "ip-192-168-32-184.us-west-2.compute.internal" is ready
[ℹ]  kubectl command should work with "/Users/ericn/.kube/config", try 'kubectl get nodes'
[✔]  EKS cluster "prod" in "us-west-2" region is ready

  2. Cluster provisioning usually takes between 10 and 15 minutes. When your cluster is ready, test that your kubectl configuration is correct. 

    kubectl get svc

    Note

    If you receive the error "aws-iam-authenticator": executable file not found in $PATH, your kubectl isn't configured for Amazon EKS. For more information, see Installing aws-iam-authenticator.

    If you receive any other authorization or resource type errors, see Unauthorized or Access Denied (kubectl) in the troubleshooting section.

    Output:

    NAME             TYPE        CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
svc/kubernetes   ClusterIP   10.100.0.1   <none>        443/TCP   1m

  3. (GPU workers only) If you chose a P2 or P3 instance type and the Amazon EKS-optimized AMI with GPU support, you must apply the NVIDIA device plugin for Kubernetes as a DaemonSet on your cluster with the following command. 

    kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA/k8s-device-plugin/1.0.0-beta/nvidia-device-plugin.yml

Next Steps

Now that you have a working Amazon EKS cluster with worker nodes, you are ready to start installing Kubernetes add-ons and deploying applications to your cluster. The following documentation topics help you to extend the functionality of your cluster.