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Install EKS Anywhere

EKS Anywhere will create and manage Kubernetes clusters on multiple providers. Currently we support creating development clusters locally using Docker and production clusters from providers listed on the Create production cluster page.

Creating an EKS Anywhere cluster begins with setting up an Administrative machine where you will run Docker and add some binaries. From there, you create the cluster for your chosen provider. See Create cluster workflow for an overview of the cluster creation process.

To create an EKS Anywhere cluster you will need eksctl and the eksctl-anywhere plugin. This will let you create a cluster in multiple providers for local development or production workloads.

NOTE: For Snow provider, the Snow devices will come with a pre-configured Admin AMI which can be used to create an Admin instance with all the necessary binaries, dependencies and artifacts to create an EKS Anywhere cluster. Skip the below steps and see Create Snow production cluster to get started with EKS Anywhere on Snow.

Administrative machine prerequisites

  • Docker 20.x.x
  • Mac OS 10.15 / Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (See Note on newer Ubuntu versions)
  • 4 CPU cores
  • 16GB memory
  • 30GB free disk space
  • Administrative machine must be on the same Layer 2 network as the cluster machines (Bare Metal provider only).

If you are using Ubuntu, use the Docker CE installation instructions to install Docker and not the Snap installation, as described here.

If you are using Ubuntu 21.10 or 22.04, you will need to switch from cgroups v2 to cgroups v1. For details, see Troubleshooting Guide.

If you are using Docker Desktop, you need to know that:

  • For EKS Anywhere Bare Metal, Docker Desktop is not supported
  • For EKS Anywhere vSphere, if you are using Mac OS Docker Desktop 4.4.2 or newer "deprecatedCgroupv1": true must be set in ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.docker/settings.json.

Install EKS Anywhere CLI tools

Via Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

You can install eksctl and eksctl-anywhere with homebrew . This package will also install kubectl and the aws-iam-authenticator which will be helpful to test EKS Anywhere clusters.

brew install aws/tap/eks-anywhere

Manually (macOS and Linux)

Install the latest release of eksctl. The EKS Anywhere plugin requires eksctl version 0.66.0 or newer.

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

Install the eksctl-anywhere plugin.

RELEASE_VERSION=$(curl https://anywhere-assets.eks.amazonaws.com/releases/eks-a/manifest.yaml --silent --location | yq ".spec.latestVersion")
EKS_ANYWHERE_TARBALL_URL=$(curl https://anywhere-assets.eks.amazonaws.com/releases/eks-a/manifest.yaml --silent --location | yq ".spec.releases[] | select(.version==\"$RELEASE_VERSION\").eksABinary.$(uname -s | tr A-Z a-z).uri")
curl $EKS_ANYWHERE_TARBALL_URL \
    --silent --location \
    | tar xz ./eksctl-anywhere
sudo mv ./eksctl-anywhere /usr/local/bin/

Install the kubectl Kubernetes command line tool. This can be done by following the instructions here .

Or you can install the latest kubectl directly with the following.

export OS="$(uname -s | tr A-Z a-z)" ARCH=$(test "$(uname -m)" = 'x86_64' && echo 'amd64' || echo 'arm64')
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/${OS}/${ARCH}/kubectl"
sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Upgrade eksctl-anywhere

If you installed eksctl-anywhere via homebrew you can upgrade the binary with

brew update
brew upgrade aws/tap/eks-anywhere

If you installed eksctl-anywhere manually you should follow the installation steps to download the latest release.

You can verify your installed version with

eksctl anywhere version

Prepare for airgapped deployments (optional)

When creating an EKS Anywhere cluster, there may be times where you need to do so in an airgapped environment. In this type of environment, cluster nodes are connected to the Admin Machine, but not to the internet. In order to download images and artifacts, however, the Admin machine needs to be temporarily connected to the internet.

An airgapped environment is especially important if you require the most secure networks. EKS Anywhere supports airgapped installation for creating clusters using a registry mirror. For airgapped installation to work, the Admin machine must have:

  • Temporary access to the internet to download images and artifacts
  • Ample space (80 GB or more) to store artifacts locally

To create a cluster in an airgapped environment, perform the following:

  1. Download the artifacts and images that will be used by the cluster nodes to the Admin machine using the following command:

    eksctl anywhere download artifacts

    A compressed file eks-anywhere-downloads.tar.gz will be downloaded.

  2. To decompress this file, use the following command:

    tar -xvf eks-anywhere-downloads.tar.gz

    This will create an eks-anywhere-downloads folder that we’ll be using later.

  3. In order for the next command to run smoothly, ensure that Docker has been pre-installed and is running. Then run the following:

    eksctl anywhere download images -o images.tar

    For the remaining steps, the Admin machine no longer needs to be connected to the internet or the bastion host.

  4. Next, you will need to set up a local registry mirror to host the downloaded EKS Anywhere images. In order to set one up, refer to Registry Mirror configuration.

  5. Now that you’ve configured your local registry mirror, you will need to import images to the local registry mirror using the following command (be sure to replace with the url of the local registry mirror you created in step 4):

    eksctl anywhere import images -i images.tar -r <registryUrl> \
   -- bundles ./eks-anywhere-downloads/bundle-release.yaml

You are now ready to deploy a cluster by following instructions to Create local cluster or Create production cluster. See text below for specific provider instructions.

For Bare Metal (Tinkerbell)

You will need to have hookOS and its OS artifacts downloaded and served locally from an HTTP file server. You will also need to modify the hookImagesURLPath and the osImageURL in the cluster configuration files. Ensure that structure of the files is set up as described in hookImagesURLPath.

For vSphere

If you are using the vSphere provider, be sure that the requirements in the Prerequisite checklist have been met.

Deploy a cluster

Once you have the tools installed you can deploy a local cluster or production cluster in the next steps.