The following steps guide you through the process of creating an EKS cluster on AWS, with the help of Pulumi IaC framework. It takes about 30 minutes to complete.
- Step 1: Create an EKS Cluster
Pulumi is an open-source infrastructure as code software platform that helps developers safely and predictably create, manage, and improve infrastructure. It provides a unified experience for managing infrastructure across multiple clouds and providers. Pulumi is controlled primarily using the command line interface (CLI).
Infrastructure as code (IaC) means using code to define and manage modern cloud infrastructure. IaC has many benefits, such as:
- Version control
- Testing
- Use of IDEs
- DevOps
Pulumi is one of the most popular IaC tools. It is actively developed and supported by a large community.
- Resources: A resource is a unit of cloud infrastructure that can be created, configured, and managed with Pulumi. Resources can be anything from virtual machines to databases to storage buckets.
- Programs: A program is a collection of resources that are managed together. Programs are written in a programming language that Pulumi supports, such as Python, JavaScript, or Go.
- Stack: A stack is an isolated, independently configurable instance of a Pulumi program. Stacks are commonly used to denote different phases of development (such as development, staging, and production) or feature branches (such as feature-x-dev). A stack has three main components:
- Environments: Environments can be used to isolate different sets of resources, such as development, staging, and production environments.
- Configuration: In many cases, different stacks for a single project will need differing values. For instance, you may want to use a different number of servers for your Kubernetes cluster between your development and production stacks. The Pulumi stack config file is a YAML file that contains configuration values for a specific stack. The file is named
Pulumi.<stack-name>.yaml, where<stack-name>is the name of the stack. - State: The state of a Pulumi stack is a snapshot of all the resources in that stack. The state is stored in local files or in a cloud service such as Pulumi's SaaS backend and AWS S3.
EKS makes it easy to deploy, manage, and scale production-grade Kubernetes clusters on AWS without having to manually maintain the control plane. It's a robust managed Kubernetes service optimized for AWS infrastructure.
Kubernetes (also known as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Kubernetes makes running containerized applications at scale simpler, more resilient, and consistent across infrastructure. Its architecture and ecosystem provide unique advantages for modern application deployments.
There are several benefits to using containers to deploy applications compared to other approaches:
- Portability: Containers are a standard unit of software that can be run anywhere, including on-premises, in public clouds, and in hybrid environments.
- Isolation: Containers provide process isolation, which means that each containerized application runs in its own isolated environment. This isolation helps ensure that the application will not be affected by changes made to other applications.
- Resource efficiency: Containers are lightweight and share the host operating system's kernel. This means that containers use fewer resources than virtual machines (VMs) and can be started and stopped much more quickly.
$ pulumi login --local
$ export PULUMI_CONFIG_PASSPHRASE="" # Set passphrase env to `""`. This passphrase is required by Pulumi and was created by Lab maintainer.
$ pulumi stack select default -c # Select the `default` stack.$ pulumi up
Updating (default):
Type Name Status
+ pulumi:pulumi:Stack 1-create-an-eks-cluster-default created
+ └─ eks:index:Cluster my-eks created
... dozens of resources omitted ...
- A developer writes a Pulumi program that defines the desired state of their infrastructure.
- The Pulumi program is compiled and executed by a language host.
- The language host generates a representation of the desired state of the infrastructure.
- The Pulumi deployment engine compares the desired state with the current state of the infrastructure.
- The deployment engine creates, updates, or deletes resources as needed to bring the infrastructure into the desired state.
$ pulumi stack output kubeconfig > kubeconfig.yaml
$ export KUBECONFIG=$PWD/kubeconfig.yaml
$ kubectl get nodes
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.us-west-2.compute.internal Ready <none> 27m v1.27.1-eks-2f008fe
ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.us-west-2.compute.internal Ready <none> 27m v1.27.1-eks-2f008fe$ export PULUMI_CONFIG_PASSPHRASE="" # Set passphrase env to `""`. This passphrase is required by Pulumi and was created by Lab maintainer.
$ pulumi destroy -y -s default