---
title: "8. Create EKS Cluster"
chapter: true
weight: 20
---

## Create EKS Cluster

In this section, we will be creating our EKS manifest file and deploying our cluster with eksctl. 

### Create EKS manifest

If you want to use SSH key created in the previous step, uncomment the lines under the `ssh` section.

```bash
# create EKS manifest file
cat > configs/tigera-workshop.yaml << EOF
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig
metadata:
  name: "tigera-workshop"
  region: "${AWS_REGION}"
  version: "${EKS_VERSION}"

availabilityZones: ["${AZS[0]}", "${AZS[1]}", "${AZS[2]}"]

managedNodeGroups:
- name: "nix-t3-large"
  desiredCapacity: 3
  # choose proper size for worker node instance as the node size detemines the number of pods that a node can run
  # it's limited by a max number of interfeces and private IPs per interface
  # t3.large has max 3 interfaces and allows up to 12 IPs per interface, therefore can run up to 36 pods per node
  # see: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-eni.html#AvailableIpPerENI
  instanceType: "t3.large"
  ssh:
    # uncomment the lines below to allow SSH access to the nodes using existing EC2 key pair
    # publicKeyName: ${KEYPAIR_NAME}
    # allow: true

# enable all of the control plane logs:
cloudWatch:
  clusterLogging:
    enableTypes: ["*"]
EOF
```

1. Use `eksctl` to create EKS cluster.

    ```bash
    eksctl create cluster -f configs/tigera-workshop.yaml
    ```

2. View EKS cluster.

    Once cluster is created you can list it using `eksctl`.

    ```bash
    eksctl get cluster tigera-workshop
    ```

3. Test access to EKS cluster with `kubectl`

    Once the EKS cluster is provisioned with `eksctl` tool, the `kubeconfig` file would be placed into `~/.kube/config` path. The `kubectl` CLI looks for `kubeconfig` at `~/.kube/config` path or into `KUBECONFIG` env var.

    ```bash
    # verify kubeconfig file path
    ls ~/.kube/config
    # test cluster connection
    kubectl get nodes
    ```