This removes the need for specialized pipeline executors and also helps to keep all tools in a single definition. Most of the modern CI/CD and orchestration tools allow execution of pipelines and configurations from a container. To simplify the dependencies management, all of the required tools can be packaged in a Docker container. We also assume a basic understanding of GitLab CI configuration syntax.īuilding and configuring an EKS cluster can require different tools and libraries. Given the complexity of the topic, please refer to the official documentation for a complete overview of Amazon EKS networking as it will not be covered in detail in this article. In this article, we are going to assume you already have an AWS account setup with a VPC, internet connectivity, and DNS resolution enabled in your VPC. This article references GitLab CI/CD with examples of code snippets but each step of the automation logic could easily be recreated with any modern CI/CD offering.īefore creating an Amazon EKS cluster, there are some networking requirements that need to be considered. This concept provides a nice separation between three macro stages of the pipeline: setup, build, and configuration. The stages of a pipeline are normally executed sequentially but the steps within a given stage are generally executed in parallel. There are a number of technologies that can be used to orchestrate an EKS cluster build so it is important to consider a few key concepts before designing your delivery mechanism. At a high level, this includes three stages within the CI/CD pipeline: template generation, cluster creation, and cluster configuration. The diagram below provides a reference design for the GitLab CI/CD solution covered in this article. In this article, we will provide some examples and guidance on how to automate different stages of creating an EKS cluster and also analyze some of the challenges. Moreover, the creation of on demand ephemeral environments can facilitate development, testing, continuous integration and quality assurance. Using Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) for EKS cluster building and configuration can simplify the software and infrastructure release cycle. However, building a repeatable and reliable Kubernetes cluster in a multi-account (or multi-region) environment can be challenging. One of the most common approaches to managing containers at scale is to utilize an orchestration technology such as AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Container technologies are becoming increasingly popular for customers developing new applications and migrating workloads to the cloud.

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