Create Bare Metal production cluster

Create a production-quality cluster on Bare Metal

EKS Anywhere supports a Bare Metal provider for production grade EKS Anywhere deployments. EKS Anywhere allows you to provision and manage Kubernetes clusters based on Amazon EKS software on your own infrastructure.

This document walks you through setting up EKS Anywhere on Bare Metal as a standalone, self-managed cluster or combined set of management/workload clusters. See Cluster topologies for details.

Prerequisite checklist

EKS Anywhere needs:

To be run on an Admin machine that has certain machine requirements .
To meet certain Bare Metal requirements for hardware and network configuration.
To have some Bare Metal preparation be in place before creating an EKS Anywhere cluster.

Also, see the Ports and protocols page for information on ports that need to be accessible from control plane, worker, and Admin machines.

Steps

The following steps are divided into two sections:

Create an initial cluster (used as a management or self-managed cluster)
Create zero or more workload clusters from the management cluster

Create an initial cluster

Follow these steps to create an EKS Anywhere cluster that can be used either as a management cluster or as a self-managed cluster (for running workloads itself).

Set an environment variables for your cluster name
```
export CLUSTER_NAME=mgmt
```

Generate a cluster config file for your Bare Metal provider (using tinkerbell as the provider type).

eksctl anywhere generate clusterconfig $CLUSTER_NAME --provider tinkerbell > eksa-mgmt-cluster.yaml

Modify the cluster config (eksa-mgmt-cluster.yaml) by referring to the Bare Metal configuration reference documentation.
Set License Environment Variable

If you are creating a licensed cluster, set and export the license variable (see License cluster if you are licensing an existing cluster):
```
export EKSA_LICENSE='my-license-here'
```
After you have created your eksa-mgmt-cluster.yaml and set your credential environment variables, you will be ready to create the cluster.
Configure Curated Packages

The Amazon EKS Anywhere Curated Packages are only available to customers with the Amazon EKS Anywhere Enterprise Subscription. To request a free trial, talk to your Amazon representative or connect with one here . Cluster creation will succeed if authentication is not set up, but some warnings may be generated. Detailed package configurations can be found here .

If you are going to use packages, set up authentication. These credentials should have limited capabilities :
```
export EKSA_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your*access*id"
export EKSA_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your*secret*key"
export EKSA_AWS_REGION="us-west-2" 
```

Create the cluster, using the hardware.csv file you made in Bare Metal preparation .

For a regular cluster create (with internet access), type the following:

eksctl anywhere create cluster \
   --hardware-csv hardware.csv \
   # --install-packages packages.yaml \ # uncomment to install curated packages at cluster creation
   -f eksa-mgmt-cluster.yaml

For an airgapped cluster create, follow Preparation for airgapped deployments instructions, then type the following:

eksctl anywhere create cluster
   --hardware-csv hardware.csv \
   # --install-packages packages.yaml \ # uncomment to install curated packages at cluster creation
   -f $CLUSTER_NAME.yaml \
   --bundles-override ./eks-anywhere-downloads/bundle-release.yaml

Once the cluster is created you can use it with the generated KUBECONFIG file in your local directory:
```
export KUBECONFIG=${PWD}/${CLUSTER_NAME}/${CLUSTER_NAME}-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
```

Check the cluster nodes:

To check that the cluster completed, list the machines to see the control plane and worker nodes:

kubectl get machines -A

Example command output:

NAMESPACE     NAME                        CLUSTER   NODENAME        PROVIDERID                              PHASE     AGE   VERSION
eksa-system   mgmt-47zj8                  mgmt      eksa-node01     tinkerbell://eksa-system/eksa-node01    Running   1h    v1.23.7-eks-1-23-4
eksa-system   mgmt-md-0-7f79df46f-wlp7w   mgmt      eksa-node02     tinkerbell://eksa-system/eksa-node02    Running   1h    v1.23.7-eks-1-23-4
...

Check the cluster:

You can now use the cluster as you would any Kubernetes cluster. To try it out, run the test application with:

export CLUSTER_NAME=mgmt
export KUBECONFIG=${PWD}/${CLUSTER_NAME}/${CLUSTER_NAME}-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
kubectl apply -f "https://anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/manifests/hello-eks-a.yaml"

Verify the test application in Deploy test workload .

Create separate workload clusters

Follow these steps if you want to use your initial cluster to create and manage separate workload clusters.

Generate a workload cluster config:
```
CLUSTER_NAME=w01
eksctl anywhere generate clusterconfig $CLUSTER_NAME \
   --provider tinkerbell > eksa-w01-cluster.yaml
```
Refer to the initial config described earlier for the required and optional settings. Ensure workload cluster object names (Cluster, TinkerbellDatacenterConfig, TinkerbellMachineConfig, etc.) are distinct from management cluster object names. Keep the tinkerbellIP of workload cluster the same as tinkerbellIP of the management cluster.
Be sure to set the managementCluster field to identify the name of the management cluster.

For example, the management cluster, mgmt is defined for our workload cluster w01 as follows:
```
apiVersion: anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: w01
spec:
  managementCluster:
    name: mgmt
```
Set License Environment Variable

Add a license to any cluster for which you want to receive paid support. If you are creating a licensed cluster, set and export the license variable (see License cluster if you are licensing an existing cluster):
```
export EKSA_LICENSE='my-license-here'
```

Create a workload cluster

To create a new workload cluster from your management cluster run this command, identifying:

The workload cluster YAML file
The initial cluster’s credentials (this causes the workload cluster to be managed from the management cluster)

With hardware CSV

eksctl anywhere create cluster \
    -f eksa-w01-cluster.yaml  \
    # --install-packages packages.yaml \ # uncomment to install curated packages at cluster creation
    --hardware-csv <hardware.csv>
    # --bundles-override ./eks-anywhere-downloads/bundle-release.yaml \ # uncomment for airgapped install
    --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig

Without hardware CSV

eksctl anywhere create cluster \
    -f eksa-w01-cluster.yaml  \
    # --install-packages packages.yaml \ # uncomment to install curated packages at cluster creation
    # --bundles-override ./eks-anywhere-downloads/bundle-release.yaml \ # uncomment for airgapped install
    --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig

As noted earlier, adding the --kubeconfig option tells eksctl to use the management cluster identified by that kubeconfig file to create a different workload cluster.

Check the workload cluster:

You can now use the workload cluster as you would any Kubernetes cluster. Change your credentials to point to the new workload cluster (for example, mgmt-w01), then run the test application with:
```
export CLUSTER_NAME=mgmt-w01
export KUBECONFIG=${PWD}/${CLUSTER_NAME}/${CLUSTER_NAME}-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
kubectl apply -f "https://anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/manifests/hello-eks-a.yaml"
```
Verify the test application in the deploy test application section.
Add more workload clusters:

To add more workload clusters, go through the same steps for creating the initial workload, copying the config file to a new name (such as eksa-w02-cluster.yaml), modifying resource names, and running the create cluster command again.

Next steps:

See the Cluster management section for more information on common operational tasks like deleting the cluster.
See the Package management section for more information on post-creation curated packages installation.