Build your Application using Amazon EKS

Introduction

Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) has been used widely for running Kubernetes clusters on AWS. It is a managed service, so you don’t have to manage everything manually. When using Amazon EKS, AWS creates and manages control plane nodes for you and allows you to focus on your applications.

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Architecture

The following diagram depicts important components involved while using EKS.

The EKS control plane comprises the Kubernetes API server nodes, etcd cluster. Kubernetes API server nodes that run components like the API server, scheduler, and kube-controller-manager run in an auto-scaling group. EKS runs a minimum of two API server nodes in distinct Availability Zones (AZs) within in AWS region. Likewise, for durability, the etcd server nodes also run in an auto-scaling group that spans three AZs. EKS runs a NAT Gateway in each AZ, and API servers and etcd servers run in a private subnet. This architecture ensures that an event in a single AZ doesn’t affect the EKS cluster’s availability. An elastic data plane ensures that Kubernetes can scale and heal your applications automatically. A resilient data plane consists of two or more worker nodes, can grow and shrink with the workload, and automatically recover from failures. You have two choices for worker nodes with EKS: EC2 instances and Fargate. If you choose EC2 instances, you can manage the worker nodes yourself or use EKS managed node groups. You can have a cluster with a mix of managed, self-managed worker nodes, and Fargate.

Setting up your AWS Environment for EKS

1. Installing the AWS CLI.
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts.

2. Configuring AWS CLI Credentials using the access key ID and secret access key of the IAM user using the command ‘aws configure’.

3. Install kubectl.
Kubectl is a command line tool used to run commands against Kubernetes clusters. It does this by authenticating with the Master Node of your cluster and making API calls to do a variety of management actions. If you’re just getting started with Kubernetes, prepare to spend a lot of time with kubectl!

4. Configure kubectl for EKS.
Sample command:

curl -LO https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

1	curl -LO https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

Launch AWS EKS

5. Create cluster

Sample command : eksctl create cluster --name ekscluster --region us-east-1 –fargate

1	Sample command : eksctl create cluster --name ekscluster --region us-east-1 –fargate

A Kubernetes (K8s) cluster is a group of computing nodes, or worker machines, that run containerized applications. Containerization is a software deployment and runtime process that bundles an application’s code with all the files and libraries it needs to run on any infrastructure.

6. Install eksctl
Sample command:

 eksctl create fargateprofile --cluster ekscluster --region us-east-1 --name alb-sample-app --namespace application1

1	eksctl create fargateprofile --cluster ekscluster --region us-east-1 --name alb-sample-app --namespace application1

eksctl is a simple CLI tool for creating and managing clusters on EKS – Amazon’s managed Kubernetes service for EC2. It is written in Go, uses CloudFormation, was created by Weaveworks and it welcomes contributions from the community.

Launch Application

7. kubectl apply -f <path to the .yaml file of your application>

Sample yaml file — Run NGINX Containers using a YAML File

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

metadata:

name: nginx-deployment

spec:

replicas: 3

selector:

matchLabels:

app: nginx

template:

metadata:

labels:

app: nginx

spec:

containers:

– name: nginx-container

image: nginx:latest

ports:

– containerPort: 80

Verify Application

8. kubectl get pods -n application1

Sample output

9. kubectl get svc -n application1

Sample output

Add Application Load Balancer

Once the application is up, one can additionally add load balancer using AWS Application Load Balancer. The steps involved

1. Download the IAM policy

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.5.4/docs/install/iam_policy.json

1	curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.5.4/docs/install/iam_policy.json

2. Create the IAM Policy

aws iam create-policy --policy-name AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy --policy-document file://iam_policy.json

1	aws iam create-policy --policy-name AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy --policy-document file://iam_policy.json

3. Create IAM Role

eksctl create iamserviceaccount --cluster=ekscluster --namespace=application1 --name=aws-load-balancer-controller --role-name AmazonEKSLoadBalancerControllerRole --attach-policy-arn=arn:aws:iam::&lt;your-aws-account-id&gt;:policy/AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy --approve

1	eksctl create iamserviceaccount --cluster=ekscluster --namespace=application1 --name=aws-load-balancer-controller --role-name AmazonEKSLoadBalancerControllerRole --attach-policy-arn=arn:aws:iam::<your-aws-account-id>:policy/AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy --approve

4. Deploy Application Load Balancer controller

Add the helm repository

Sample Command:

helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

1	helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

Update the repository

helm repo update eks

1	helm repo update eks

Install the load balancer

helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller -n kube-system --set clusterName=ekscluster --set serviceAccount.create=false --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller --set region=&lt;region&gt; --set vpcId=&lt;your-vpc-id&gt;

1	helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller -n kube-system --set clusterName=ekscluster --set serviceAccount.create=false --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller --set region=<region> --set vpcId=<your-vpc-id>

Verify the installation

kubectl get deployment -n kube-system aws-load-balancer-controller

1	kubectl get deployment -n kube-system aws-load-balancer-controller

Conclusion

The step-by-step process helps in setting up all the entire end to end environment for launching your application using AWS EKS. The process starts with understanding the architecture, setting up the prerequisite, creating and configuring the cluster, launching the application and verifying the same. Additionally, one can make use of AWS Application Load balancer to serve as the single point of contact for the application.

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