Amazon EKS

Prerequisites

In order to set up a Bottlerocket cluster on EKS, you will need the latest versions of the following tools installed:

• eksctl: Used to create EKS clusters.
• kubectl: Used to interact with resources within a Kubernetes cluster.
• aws-cli: Used to interact with AWS services.
• SSM Session Manager Plugin for AWS CLI: Used to enter SSM sessions on Bottlerocket nodes through the AWS CLI.

Cluster Setup

There are two main steps to setting up an EKS cluster: creating the configuration file and applying the configuration file using eksctl.

Cluster Configuration File

eksctl can use a YAML configuration file to create an EKS cluster. First, set some environment variables:

• AWS_REGION: AWS region to create the cluster in.
• K8S_VERSION: Kubernetes version to use for the cluster.
• EKS_CLUSTER_NAME: Name of the EKS cluster to create.

export AWS_REGION="us-west-2"
export K8S_VERSION="1.25"
export EKS_CLUSTER_NAME="bottlerocket-quickstart-eks"

The following command (on Linux and macOS) will create an example configuration file named bottlerocket-quickstart-eks.yaml that specifies a cluster with 3 Bottlerocket nodes:

cat << EOF > bottlerocket-quickstart-eks.yaml
---
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: $EKS_CLUSTER_NAME
  region: $AWS_REGION
  version: "$K8S_VERSION"

nodeGroups:
  - name: ng-bottlerocket-quickstart
    instanceType: m5.large
    desiredCapacity: 3
    amiFamily: Bottlerocket
    iam:
       attachPolicyARNs:
          - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonEKSWorkerNodePolicy
          - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonEKS_CNI_Policy
          - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryReadOnly
          - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore
    bottlerocket:
      settings:
        motd: "Hello from eksctl!"
EOF

On Windows, you will need to create this file in a text editor and replace $EKS_CLUSTER_NAME, $AWS_REGION, and $K8S_VERSION with your desired values. The contents to copy are between the cat << EOF > bottlerocket-quickstart-eks.yaml and EOF lines.

Cluster Creation

Start the cluster creation process using the configuration file you created in the last step (bottlerocket-quickstart-eks.yaml in this example):

eksctl create cluster --config-file ./bottlerocket-quickstart-eks.yaml

Get a cup of coffee ☕️, it will take a while to provision your control plane and cluster nodes.

Confirm Your Cluster is Running

To confirm that Bottlerocket nodes are running in your cluster, you can run the following command to list your cluster nodes and what operating system they are running:

kubectl get nodes -o=wide

You should see output that contains a column similar to the following:

... OS-IMAGE                              ...
    Bottlerocket OS 1.12.0 (aws-k8s-1.25)
    Bottlerocket OS 1.12.0 (aws-k8s-1.25)
    Bottlerocket OS 1.12.0 (aws-k8s-1.25)

Next, get an instance ID from any one of the nodes in the cluster (remember that $EKS_CLUSTER_NAME is set to the name of your EKS cluster):

aws ec2 describe-instances  --no-cli-pager --filters "Name=tag:aws:eks:cluster-name,Values=$EKS_CLUSTER_NAME" --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].{PrivateDNS:PrivateDnsName,InstanceID:InstanceId,Cluster:Tags[?Key=='aws:eks:cluster-name']|[0].Value,State:State.Name}" --output=table

You should see output that contains a column similar to the following:

    +----------------------+
... |     InstanceID       | ...
    +----------------------+
    |  i-04c2b2087...      |
    |  i-0e61e2b0a...      |
    |  i-022aca952...      |
    +----------------------+

Interacting With Your Cluster

To confirm in depth that an instance is running Bottlerocket, pick an instance ID and follow the steps in the Host Containers Quickstart. Any of the instance IDs listed for the bottlerocket-quickstart-eks cluster should work.

Congratulations! You now have a Bottlerocket cluster running on EKS.