# Part 1: Provision

## What Will You Do

In this part of the self-paced exercise, you will provision an Amazon EKS cluster based on a declarative cluster specification using the minimal blueprint.

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## Step 1: Cluster Spec

- Open a suitable YAML editor and copy/paste the example EKS cluster specification provided below.
- Save the file as "external-dns-demo.yaml" (an example)

**Cluster Spec Explained**

In the example cluster spec provided:

- The name of the EKS cluster will be "external-dns-demo" and it is configured to be provisioned in the "defaultproject" in your Org.
- The EKS cluster is configured with one managed node group.
- The node group will have the necessary permissions to modify Route 53 hosted zones.

The following items in the declarative cluster specification will need to be updated/customized for your environment.

- cluster name: "external-dns-demo"
- project: "defaultproject"
- cloudCredentials: "my-cloud-credential"
- region: "us-west-2"
- AWS Tags as required in your AWS account

```yaml
apiVersion: infra.k8smgmt.io/v3
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  # The name of the cluster
  name: external-dns-demo
  # The name of the project the cluster will be created in
  project: defaultproject
spec:
  blueprintConfig:
    # The name of the blueprint the cluster will use
    name: minimal
    # The version of the blueprint the cluster will use
    version: latest
  # The name of the cloud credential that will be used to create the cluster
  cloudCredentials: my-cloud-credential
  config:
    # The EKS addons that will be applied to the cluster
    addons:
    - name: kube-proxy
      version: latest
    - name: vpc-cni
      version: latest
    - name: coredns
      version: latest
    managedNodeGroups:
      # The AWS AMI family type the nodes will use
    - amiFamily: AmazonLinux2
      # The desired number of nodes that can run in the node group
      desiredCapacity: 1
      iam:
        withAddonPolicies:
          # Enables the IAM policy for cluster autoscale
          autoScaler: true
          # Adds policies for using the aws-load-balancer-controller
          awsLoadBalancerController: true
          # Adds the external-dns project policies for Amazon Route 53
          externalDNS: true
      # The AWS EC2 instance type that will be used for the nodes
      instanceType: t3.large
      # The maximum number of nodes that can run in the node group
      maxSize: 6
      # The minimum number of nodes that can run in the node group
      minSize: 1
      # The name of the node group that will be created in AWS
      name: my-ng
      # Enable private networking for the nodegroup
      privateNetworking: true
      # The size in gigabytes of the volume attached to each node
      volumeSize: 80
      # The type of disk backing the node volume. alid variants are: "gp2" is General Purpose SSD, "gp3" is General Purpose SSD which can be optimised for high throughput (default), "io1" is Provisioned
      volumeType: gp3
    metadata:
      # The name of the cluster
      name: external-dns-demo
      # The AWS region the cluster will be created in
      region: us-west-2
      # The tags that will be applied to the AWS cluster resources
      tags:
        owner: rafay
      # The Kubernetes version that will be installed on the cluster
      version: latest
    vpc:
      clusterEndpoints:
        # Enables private access to the Kubernetes API server endpoints
        privateAccess: true
        # Enables public access to the Kubernetes API server endpoints
        publicAccess: false
  proxyConfig: {}
  type: aws-eks
```

---

## Step 2: Provision Cluster

- Type the command below to provision the EKS cluster

```
rctl apply -f external-dns-demo.yaml
```

If there are no errors, you will be presented with a "Task ID" that you can use to check progress/status. Note that this step requires creation of infrastructure in your AWS account and can take ~20-30 minutes to complete.

```json
{
  "taskset_id": "z24xwvk",
  "operations": [
    {
      "operation": "ClusterCreation",
      "resource_name": "external-dns-demo",
      "status": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_PENDING"
    },
    {
      "operation": "NodegroupCreation",
      "resource_name": "my-ng",
      "status": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_PENDING"
    },
    {
      "operation": "BlueprintSync",
      "resource_name": "external-dns-demo",
      "status": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_PENDING"
    }
  ],
  "comments": "The status of the operations can be fetched using taskset_id",
  "status": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_PENDING"
}
```

- Navigate to the specified "project" in your Org
- Click on Infrastructure -> Clusters.

The provisioning process can take approximately 30 minutes to fully complete.

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## Step 3: Verify Cluster

Once provisioning is complete, you should see the cluster in the web console.

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## Recap

Congratulations! At this point, you have successfully provisioned an Amazon EKS cluster in your AWS account using the RCTL CLI.

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