Getting started with cluster-api-provider-aws

Requirements

Linux or MacOS (Windows isn't supported at the moment)
A set of AWS credentials sufficient to bootstrap the cluster (see bootstrapping-aws-identity-and-access-management-with-cloudformation).
An AWS IAM role to give to the Cluster API control plane.
KIND >= v0.1
gettext (with envsubst in your PATH)

Optional

AWS CLI
Homebrew (MacOS)
jq
Go >= v1.11

Prerequisites

Install release binaries

Get the latest release of clusterctl and clusterawsadm and place them in your path.

If you prefer to build the latest version from master you can use go get sigs.k8s.io/cluster-api-provider-aws/... – the trailing ... will ask for both clusterctl and clusterawsadm to be built.

Setting up AWS

`clusterawsadm`

Cluster-API-Provider-AWS provides a tool, clusterawsadm to help you manage your AWS IAM objects for this project. In order to use clusterawsadm you must have an administrative user in an AWS account. Once you have that administrator user you need to set your environment variables:

AWS_REGION
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

After these are set run this command to get you up and running:

clusterawsadm alpha bootstrap create-stack

non-`clusterawsadm`

This is not a recommended route as the policies are very specific and will change with new features.

If you do not wish to use the clusteradwsadm tool then you will need to understand exactly which IAM policies and groups we are expecting. There are several policies, roles and users that need to be created. Please see our controller policy file to understand the permissions that are necessary.

SSH Key pair

You will need to specify the name of an existing SSH key pair within the region you plan on using. If you don't have one yet, a new one needs to be created.

Create a new key pair

# Save the output to a secure location
aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name default | jq .KeyMaterial -r
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
[... contents omitted ...]
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

If you want to save the private key directly into AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store with KMS encryption for security, you can use the following command:

aws ssm put-parameter --name "/sigs.k8s.io/cluster-api-provider-aws/ssh-key" \
  --type SecureString \
  --value "$(aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name default | jq .KeyMaterial -r)"
{
"Version": 1
}

Using an existing key

# Replace with your own public key
aws ec2 import-key-pair \
  --key-name default \
  --public-key-material "$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"

Only RSA keys are supported by AWS.

Deploying a cluster

Setting up the environment

The current iteration of the Cluster API Provider AWS relies on credentials being present in your environment. These then get written into the cluster manifests for use by the controllers.

If you used clusterawsadm to set up IAM resources for you then you can run these commands to prepare your environment.

Your AWS_REGION must already be set.

export AWS_CREDENTIALS=$(aws iam create-access-key \
  --user-name bootstrapper.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io)
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$(echo $AWS_CREDENTIALS | jq .AccessKey.AccessKeyId -r)
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(echo $AWS_CREDENTIALS | jq .AccessKey.SecretAccessKey -r)

If you did not use clusterawsadm to provision your user you will need to set these environment variables in your own way.

To save credentials securely in your environment, aws-vault uses the OS keystore as permanent storage, and offers shell features to securely expose and setup local AWS environments.

Generating cluster manifests and example cluster

Download the latest cluster-api-provider-aws-examples.tar file from the Releases page and unpack it.

curl -LO https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-aws/releases/download/<version>/cluster-api-provider-aws-examples.tar
tar xfv cluster-api-provider-aws-examples.tar

Then run ./generate-yaml.sh to generate manifests:

./aws/generate-yaml.sh

You should not need to edit the generated manifests, but if you want to do any customization now is the time to do it. Take a look at ./aws/out/cluster.yaml and ./aws/out/machine.yaml.

Ensure the region and keyName are set to what you expect.

Cluster name

By default the cluster name is set test1 when generating manifests, CLUSTER_NAME environment variable is used in make manifests to customize the cluster name.

export CLUSTER_NAME="<pony-unicorns>"

Using an existing VPC

By default the provider creates network resources needed to spin up a cluster on AWS. Users can bring their own network infrastructure and disable the default behavior declaring the VPC_ID environment variable before the make manifests step.

Features and limitations:

VPCs are required to have at least 1 private and 1 public subnet available.
Cluster name must be unique within a region: the limitation comes from the ELB naming scheme which is required to be unique within a region.
Security groups cannot be customized at the time of writing.

Creating a cluster

You can now start the Cluster API controllers and deploy a new cluster in AWS:

clusterctl create cluster -v 3 \
  --bootstrap-type kind \
  --provider aws \
  -m ./aws/out/machines.yaml \
  -c ./aws/out/cluster.yaml \
  -p ./aws/out/provider-components.yaml \
  -a ./aws/out/addons.yaml

I0119 12:16:07.521123   38557 plugins.go:39] Registered cluster provisioner "aws"
I0119 12:16:07.522563   38557 createbootstrapcluster.go:27] Creating bootstrap cluster
I0119 12:16:07.522573   38557 kind.go:53] Running: kind [create cluster --name=clusterapi]
I0119 12:16:40.661674   38557 kind.go:56] Ran: kind [create cluster --name=clusterapi] Output: Creating cluster 'kind-clusterapi' ...
 • Ensuring node image (kindest/node:v1.12.2) 🖼  ...
 ✓ Ensuring node image (kindest/node:v1.12.2) 🖼
 • [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Creating node container 📦  ...
 ✓ [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Creating node container 📦
 • [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Fixing mounts 🗻  ...
 ✓ [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Fixing mounts 🗻
 • [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Starting systemd 🖥  ...
 ✓ [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Starting systemd 🖥
 • [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Waiting for docker to be ready 🐋  ...
 ✓ [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Waiting for docker to be ready 🐋
 • [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Starting Kubernetes (this may take a minute) ☸  ...
 ✓ [kind-clusterapi-control-plane] Starting Kubernetes (this may take a minute) ☸
Cluster creation complete. You can now use the cluster with:

export KUBECONFIG="$(kind get kubeconfig-path --name="clusterapi")"
kubectl cluster-info
I0119 12:16:40.661740   38557 kind.go:53] Running: kind [get kubeconfig-path --name=clusterapi]
I0119 12:16:40.686496   38557 kind.go:56] Ran: kind [get kubeconfig-path --name=clusterapi] Output: /path/to/.kube/kind-config-clusterapi
I0119 12:16:40.688189   38557 clusterdeployer.go:95] Applying Cluster API stack to bootstrap cluster
I0119 12:16:40.688199   38557 applyclusterapicomponents.go:26] Applying Cluster API Provider Components
I0119 12:16:40.688207   38557 clusterclient.go:520] Waiting for kubectl apply...
I0119 12:16:40.981186   38557 clusterclient.go:549] Waiting for Cluster v1alpha resources to become available...
I0119 12:16:40.989350   38557 clusterclient.go:562] Waiting for Cluster v1alpha resources to be listable...
I0119 12:16:40.997829   38557 clusterdeployer.go:100] Provisioning target cluster via bootstrap cluster
I0119 12:16:41.002232   38557 applycluster.go:36] Creating cluster object test1 in namespace "default"
I0119 12:16:41.007516   38557 clusterdeployer.go:109] Creating control plane controlplane-0 in namespace "default"
I0119 12:16:41.011616   38557 applymachines.go:36] Creating machines in namespace "default"
I0119 12:16:41.021539   38557 clusterclient.go:573] Waiting for Machine controlplane-0 to become ready...

The created KIND cluster is ephemeral and is cleaned up automatically when done. During the cluster creation, the KIND configuration is written to a local directory and can be retrieved using kind get kubeconfig-path --name="clusterapi".

For a more in-depth look into what clusterctl is doing during this create step, please see the clusterctl document.

Using the cluster

Kubeconfig for the new cluster is created in the directory from where the above clusterctl create was run. Run the following command to point kubectl to the kubeconfig of the new cluster export KUBECONFIG=$(PWD)/kubeconfig

Alternatively, move the kubeconfig file to a desired location and set the KUBECONFIG environment variable accordingly.

Troubleshooting

Bootstrap running, but resources aren't being created

Logs can be tailed using kubectl:

export KUBECONFIG=$(kind get kubeconfig-path --name="clusterapi")
kubectl logs -f -n aws-provider-system aws-provider-controller-manager-0

Target cluster's control plane machine is up but target cluster's apiserver not working as expected

If aws-provider-controller-manager-0 logs did not help, you might want to look into cloud-init logs, /var/log/cloud-init-output.log, on the controller host. Verifying kubelet status and logs may also provide hints:

journalctl -u kubelet.service
systemctl status kubelet

For reaching controller host from your local machine:

 ssh -i <private-key> -o "ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p -i <private-key> ubuntu@<bastion-IP>" ubuntu@<controller-host-IP>

private-key is the private key from the key-pair discussed in the ssh key pair section above.

kubelet on the control plane host failing with error: NoCredentialProviders

failed to run Kubelet: could not init cloud provider "aws": error finding instance i-0c276f2a1f1c617b2: "error listing AWS instances: \"NoCredentialProviders: no valid providers in chain. Deprecated.\\n\\tFor verbose messaging see aws.Config.CredentialsChainVerboseErrors\""

This error can occur if CloudFormation stack is not created properly and IAM instance profile is missing appropriate roles. Run following command to inspect IAM instance profile:

$ aws iam get-instance-profile --instance-profile-name control-plane.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io --output json
{
    "InstanceProfile": {
        "InstanceProfileId": "AIPAJQABLZS4A3QDU576Q", 
        "Roles": [
            {
                "AssumeRolePolicyDocument": {
                    "Version": "2012-10-17", 
                    "Statement": [
                        {
                            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole", 
                            "Effect": "Allow", 
                            "Principal": {
                                "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
                            }
                        }
                    ]
                }, 
                "RoleId": "AROAJQABLZS4A3QDU576Q", 
                "CreateDate": "2019-05-13T16:45:12Z", 
                "RoleName": "control-plane.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io", 
                "Path": "/", 
                "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/control-plane.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io"
            }
        ], 
        "CreateDate": "2019-05-13T16:45:28Z", 
        "InstanceProfileName": "control-plane.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io", 
        "Path": "/", 
        "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:instance-profile/control-plane.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io"
    }
}

If instance profile does not look as expected, you may try recreating the CloudFormation stack using clusterawsadm as explained in the above sections.

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getting-started.md

getting-started.md

Getting started with cluster-api-provider-aws

Contents

Requirements

Optional

Prerequisites

Install release binaries

Setting up AWS

`clusterawsadm`

non-`clusterawsadm`

SSH Key pair

Create a new key pair

Using an existing key

Deploying a cluster

Setting up the environment

Generating cluster manifests and example cluster

Cluster name

Using an existing VPC

Creating a cluster

Using the cluster

Troubleshooting

Bootstrap running, but resources aren't being created

Target cluster's control plane machine is up but target cluster's apiserver not working as expected

kubelet on the control plane host failing with error: NoCredentialProviders

Files

getting-started.md

Latest commit

History

getting-started.md

File metadata and controls

Getting started with cluster-api-provider-aws

Contents

Requirements

Optional

Prerequisites

Install release binaries

Setting up AWS

clusterawsadm

non-clusterawsadm

SSH Key pair

Create a new key pair

Using an existing key

Deploying a cluster

Setting up the environment

Generating cluster manifests and example cluster

Cluster name

Using an existing VPC

Creating a cluster

Using the cluster

Troubleshooting

Bootstrap running, but resources aren't being created

Target cluster's control plane machine is up but target cluster's apiserver not working as expected

kubelet on the control plane host failing with error: NoCredentialProviders

`clusterawsadm`

non-`clusterawsadm`