Install AWS Load Balancer Controller with Helm

Tip

With Amazon EKS Auto Mode, you don’t need to install or upgrade networking add-ons. Auto Mode includes pod networking and load balancing capabilities.

For more information, see Automate cluster infrastructure with EKS Auto Mode.

This topic describes how to install the AWS Load Balancer Controller using Helm, a package manager for Kubernetes, and eksctl. The controller is installed with default options. For more information about the controller, including details on configuring it with annotations, see the AWS Load Balancer Controller Documentation on GitHub.

In the following steps, replace the example values with your own values.

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, you must install and configure the following tools and resources that you need to create and manage an Amazon EKS cluster.

• An existing Amazon EKS cluster. To deploy one, see Get started with Amazon EKS.

• An existing AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider for your cluster. To determine whether you already have one, or to create one, see Create an IAM OIDC provider for your cluster.

• Make sure that your Amazon VPC CNI plugin for Kubernetes, kube-proxy, and CoreDNS add-ons are at the minimum versions listed in Service account tokens.

• Familiarity with AWS Elastic Load Balancing. For more information, see the Elastic Load Balancing User Guide.

• Familiarity with Kubernetes service and ingress resources.

• Helm installed locally.

Step 1: Create IAM Role using eksctl

Note

You only need to create an IAM Role for the AWS Load Balancer Controller once per AWS account. Check if AmazonEKSLoadBalancerControllerRole exists in the IAM Console. If this role exists, skip to Step 2: Install AWS Load Balancer Controller.

1. Download an IAM policy for the AWS Load Balancer Controller that allows it to make calls to AWS APIs on your behalf.

   AWS

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.7.2/docs/install/iam_policy.json

   AWS GovCloud (US)

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.7.2/docs/install/iam_policy_us-gov.json

   mv iam_policy_us-gov.json iam_policy.json

2. Create an IAM policy using the policy downloaded in the previous step.

   aws iam create-policy \
       --policy-name AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
       --policy-document file://iam_policy.json

   Note

   If you view the policy in the AWS Management Console, the console shows warnings for the ELB service, but not for the ELB v2 service. This happens because some of the actions in the policy exist for ELB v2, but not for ELB. You can ignore the warnings for ELB.

3. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster, 111122223333 with your account ID, and then run the command. If your cluster is in the AWS GovCloud (US-East) or AWS GovCloud (US-West) AWS Regions, then replace arn:aws: with arn:aws-us-gov:.

   eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
     --cluster=my-cluster \
     --namespace=kube-system \
     --name=aws-load-balancer-controller \
     --role-name AmazonEKSLoadBalancerControllerRole \
     --attach-policy-arn=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:policy/AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
     --approve

Step 2: Install AWS Load Balancer Controller

1. Add the eks-charts Helm chart repository. AWS maintains this repository on GitHub.

   helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

2. Update your local repo to make sure that you have the most recent charts.

   helm repo update eks

3. Install the AWS Load Balancer Controller.

   If you’re deploying the controller to Amazon EC2 nodes that have restricted access to the Amazon EC2 instance metadata service (IMDS), or if you’re deploying to Fargate or Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes, then add the following flags to the helm command that follows:

   • --set region=region-code

   • --set vpcId=vpc-xxxxxxxx

     Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster. In the following command, aws-load-balancer-controller is the Kubernetes service account that you created in a previous step.

     For more information about configuring the helm chart, see values.yaml on GitHub.

     helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller \
       -n kube-system \
       --set clusterName=my-cluster \
       --set serviceAccount.create=false \
       --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller

Important

The deployed chart doesn’t receive security updates automatically. You need to manually upgrade to a newer chart when it becomes available. When upgrading, change install to upgrade in the previous command.

The helm install command automatically installs the custom resource definitions (CRDs) for the controller. The helm upgrade command does not. If you use helm upgrade, you must manually install the CRDs. Run the following command to install the CRDs:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/eks-charts/master/stable/aws-load-balancer-controller/crds/crds.yaml
kubectl apply -f crds.yaml

Step 3: Verify that the controller is installed

1. Verify that the controller is installed.

   kubectl get deployment -n kube-system aws-load-balancer-controller

   An example output is as follows.

   NAME                           READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
   aws-load-balancer-controller   2/2     2            2           84s

   You receive the previous output if you deployed using Helm. If you deployed using the Kubernetes manifest, you only have one replica.

2. Before using the controller to provision AWS resources, your cluster must meet specific requirements. For more information, see Route application and HTTP traffic with Application Load Balancers and Route TCP and UDP traffic with Network Load Balancers.