Create EKS Cluster

For this exercise we will need to create an EKS cluster. We will be using the Cloud9 terminal window to do this.

Not all AWS regions have all EKS capabilities enabled. The config file below assumes you are running the workshop from us-west-2 (Oregon). If you are using a different region make sure you replace us-west-2 in the config with your region.

Create a new file in the root of your environment called cluster.yaml and paste in the following as the contents:

apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: gitopsworkshop
  region: us-west-2

nodeGroups:
  - name: ng-1
    instanceType: m5.large
    desiredCapacity: 1
    iam:
      withAddonPolicies:
        albIngress: true
        appMesh: true
        xRay: true
        cloudWatch: true

In the terminal window, execute the following:

# make sure we are in the root environment folder
cd ~/environment

# Create the cluster
eksctl create cluster -f cluster.yaml

This command will take around 10-15 minutes to create our cluster, so now would be a good time to take a break or ask a question.

When the command completes check that you can access the cluster using kubectl by executing the following command in the terminal window:

kubectl get nodes

You should see 2 nodes listed.

If you are using your own AWS account, you will need permissions to create EKS clusters plus admin rights within your EKS cluster to configure configuration rules and install agents. Ensure you have authority within your organization to do this in your tenant.