Create a new Cluster with eksctl

In this procedure, you will create an Ocean Kubernetes cluster with eksctl and migrate existing unmanaged nodegroups into Ocean-managed ones so you can spend more time with other tasks instead of managing infrastructure.

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have an IAM user in your AWS account with both Console and Programmatic Access credentials.
• Connect your AWS account to Spot.
• Install awscli v2.0 or later and configure AWS credentials. If you already have awscli installed, run aws --version to verify the version.
• Install kubectl (provided by Amazon EKS).
• If you are going to use spotctl commands, install spotctl.

Configure your Spot Credentials

To configure your Spot credentials using environment variables, run the following commands.

$ export SPOTINST_TOKEN=<spotinst_token>
$ export SPOTINST_ACCOUNT=<spotinst_account>

Alternatively, you can configure your Spot credentials using a spotctl command or manually create an INI formatted file. For more information, see the spotctl Getting Started.

Configure your AWS Credentials

To use environment variables, run the following commands.

$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<aws_access_key>
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<aws_secret_access_key>

Alternatively, you can use the AWS credentials file. For more information, see Quick Configuration with aws configure.

Install eksctl

1. Download and extract the eksctl binary with the following command from the spotinst eksctl github repo.

$ curl -sfL https://spotinst-public.s3.amazonaws.com/integrations/kubernetes/eksctl/eksctl.sh | sh

2. Move the extracted binary.

$ sudo mv ./bin/eksctl /usr/local/bin && rm -rf ./bin

3. Test that your installation was successful with the following command.

$ eksctl version

Create your EKS Cluster and Worker Nodes

Using CLI Flags

Create your cluster and worker nodes with the following command. Replace the example values with your own values.

$ eksctl create cluster \
    --name prod \
    --nodegroup-name standard-workers \
    --spot-ocean

The spot-ocean command-line flag enables Ocean integration.

Using Config Files

Alternatively, you can create a cluster using configuration files.

1. Create a cluster.yaml file to hold your cluster and worker nodes configuration. The spotOcean: {} section below enables Ocean integration. This section can remain empty, using all defaults, or if you'd like to configure your Ocean integration, create a cluster.yaml file with the following configuration:

apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig
metadata:
 name: prod
 tags:
   creator: bob
   environment: prod

spotOcean:
  strategy:
    utilizeReservedInstances: true
    fallbackToOnDemand: true

nodeGroups:
 - name: standard-workers
   [... nodegroup standard fields; ssh, tags, etc.]
   spotOcean:
     strategy:
      # Percentage of Spot instances that would spin up from the desired
      # capacity.
       spotPercentage: 100

     autoScaler:
      # Spare resource capacity management enabling fast assignment of Pods
      # without waiting for new resources to launch.
       headrooms:
          # Number of CPUs to allocate. CPUs are denoted in millicores, where
          # 1000 millicores = 1 vCPU.
         - cpuPerUnit: 2
          # Number of GPUs to allocate.
           gpuPerUnit: 0
          # Amount of memory (MB) to allocate.
           memoryPerUnit: 64
          # Number of units to retain as headroom, where each unit has the
          # defined CPU and memory.
           numOfUnits: 1
     compute:
       instanceTypes:
        # Instance types allowed in the Ocean cluster.
       - t2.large
       - c5.large

2. Create your Amazon EKS cluster and worker nodes with the following command.

$ eksctl create cluster -f cluster.yaml

Tip: Cluster provisioning usually takes between 10 and 15 minutes.

Verifications

Perform the following steps to verify your kubectl and Ocean controller installations. These steps are optional.

1. When your cluster is ready, enter the command below to test that your kubectl configuration is correct.

$ kubectl get svc
NAME           TYPE      CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
svc/kubernetes ClusterIP 10.100.0.1 <none>      443/TCP 1m

Tip: If you receive the error aws-iam-authenticator: executable file not found in $PATH, your kubectl is not configured for Amazon EKS. For more information, see Installing aws-iam-authenticator.

2. Enter the command below to test the installation of the Ocean controller.

$ kubectl get deployment --namespace kube-system
NAME                                   READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
spotinst-kubernetes-cluster-controller 1/1   1          1         5m

That's it! Your Ocean cluster is up and will now ensure the most cost-effective capacity and sizing possible for your cluster.

What's Next?

Learn how to Connect an Existing Cluster to Ocean using eksctl.