Create an AWS Kubernetes Cluster

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Pro Tip

To create the cluster, we definitely recommend you use eksctl. It will undoubtedly make your life simpler.

We recommend against using the AWS web console, as changes made there are hard to track and replicate.

Create an AWS Kubernetes cluster using eksctl

For eksctl to work, it also needs the AWS CLI installed.

1. Install the AWS CLI. Instructions on how to do that are available on the AWS documentation website.

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You can configure the AWS CLI using the aws configure command.

2. Install eksctl. Read more on how you can do this on the eksctl website.

3. Create a cluster definition yaml file by following the instructions provided in this documentation.

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You might face the following error while creating the cluster:

Unable to connect to the server: getting credentials: exec plugin is configured to use API version client.authentication.k8s.io/v1alpha1, plugin returned version client.authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1.

In such cases, you can install the AWS EKS vended kubectl (linked here), then run the command cat ~/.kube/config and update the API version line respectively.

4. Add the cluster to your kubectl configuration by downloading the config from AWS using the following command:

aws eks update-kubeconfig --region {REGION_CODE} --name {CLUSTER_NAME}

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Replace the {REGION_CODE} and {CLUSTER_NAME} with the newly created clusters details.

5. When connecting the cluster to Bunnyshell, you have to provide the following:

• Cluster name
• AWS Cluster name
• Cluster URL
• Certificate
• Access Key ID
• Secret Access Key

By default the configuration will be downloaded to ~/.kube/config-file-name. View this file and extract the relevant information provided below:

• AWS Cluster name: Corresponds to the name of the cluster.
  Extract only the first part, eg bunnyshell-demo-cluster.

- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: <very-long-encoded-text-here>
    ...
  name: bunnyshell-demo-cluster.eu-west-1.eksctl.io

• Cluster URL: Corresponds to the cluster.server key in the below example.

- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: <very-long-encoded-text-here>
    server: https://2E34896AD30433FAB54DB2F7A984F5C1.gr7.eu-west-1.eks.amazonaws.com
...

• Certificate: Corresponds to the cluster.certificate-authority-data in the below example.

- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: <very-long-encoded-text-here>
    server: https://2E34896AD30433FAB54DB2F7A984F5C1.gr7.eu-west-1.eks.amazonaws.com
...

• Access Key ID and Secret Access Key are needed to programmatically obtain a token for cluster access.
  These can be found in the ~/.aws/credentials file after you have run the aws configure command provided above.