Add an existing EKS cluster

After you have created a credential to access your AWS EKS account, you can bring the existing clusters in your account under the management of VMware Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes.

If you have an existing EKS cluster on which you want to deploy a Space, you can add the cluster to Tanzu Platform. The following procedure provides the steps to add an existing EKS cluster and specify the cluster group with which to associate the cluster. When you associate the cluster to a cluster group, all the resources associated with the cluster group are also deployed to the cluster.

Before you begin

You need the following to add an existing EKS cluster:

• An EKS role ARN. If you don’t have role ARN, you can create the role when you go through the steps in Tanzu Platform hub to add the EKS cluster.

  Note

  The instructions to generate the role ARN are only provided in Tanzu Platform hub.

• In Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes:

  • EKS credentials. See Create EKS credentials.
  • A project.
  • A cluster group.

• If you are using the Tanzu CLI:

  • Installed the Tanzu CLI v1.3.0 or higher. Tanzu CLI is required for CLI procedures. See Install the Tanzu CLI.

  Note

  To make installing subsequent updates easier, use the package manager method to install the Tanzu CLI, rather than installing from a binary release.

  • Created a Tanzu CLI context. For instructions how to create the Tanzu CLI context, see Create a Tanzu CLI Context.

• The EKS cluster should have managed Nodegroups.

• The EKS cluster should have kube-proxy, coreDNS and vpc-cni addons. Optionally it can have aws-ebs-csi-driver. These addons are managed by Tanzu Platform.
• The EKS cluster can have aws-efs-csi-driver, aws-guardduty-agent, eks-pod-identity-agent, amazon-cloudwatch-observability, snapshot-controller addons, but Tanzu Platform does not manage upgrades for these addons.
• The node pools cannot have ARM architecture based nodes.
• The Tanzu Platform EKS credential role needs to have some permissions to access the EKS cluster. Please go through this document to add permission.
• (Optional) If you want to use the Bitnami services in your Space, the EKS cluster must have the Amazon EBS CSI driver installed.

Add an EKS cluster

You can add an existing EKS cluster using Tanzu Platform hub or the tanzu CLI.

Tanzu Platform hub

Perform the following steps in Tanzu Platform hub:

1. Select the project in which you want to work.
2. In the left navigation pane, click to expand Infrastructure, and then click Kubernetes Clusters.
3. On the Clusters tab of the Kubernetes Clusters page, click Add Cluster, and then choose Manage existing EKS cluster.
4. Follow the instructions in the hub to add the EKS cluster.

tanzu CLI

Run the following commands in a command window:

• Run the following tanzu CLI command to add an existing EKS cluster:

  tanzu operations pekscluster manage <name of the cluster> -c <credential name> -r <region> -g <cluster group> -a <roleArn>
  

• Run the following command to remove the cluster from Tanzu Platform management:

  tanzu operations pekscluster unmanage <name of the cluster> -c <credential name> -r <region> -g <cluster group>
  

After you add the cluster, it is listed on the Clusters tab of the Kubernetes Clusters page. It can take up to five minutes before you can perform actions on the newly added EKS cluster.