Amazon EKS AMI Build Specification
This repository contains resources and configuration scripts for building a custom Amazon EKS AMI with HashiCorp Packer. This is the same configuration that Amazon EKS uses to create the official Amazon EKS-optimized AMI.
Setup
You must have Packer installed on your local system. For more information, see Installing Packer in the Packer documentation. You must also have AWS account credentials configured so that Packer can make calls to AWS API operations on your behalf. For more information, see Authentication in the Packer documentation.
Note
The default instance type to build this AMI is an m4.large and does not
qualify for the AWS free tier. You are charged for any instances created
when building this AMI.
Building the AMI
A Makefile is provided to build the AMI, but it is just a small wrapper around invoking Packer directly. You can initiate the build process by running the following command in the root of this repository:
makeThe Makefile runs Packer with the eks-worker-al2.json build specification
template and the amazon-ebs
builder. An instance is launched and the Packer Shell
Provisioner runs the
install-worker.sh script on the instance to install software and perform other
necessary configuration tasks. Then, Packer creates an AMI from the instance
and terminates the instance after the AMI is created.
Using the AMI
If you are just getting started with Amazon EKS, we recommend that you follow our Getting Started chapter in the Amazon EKS User Guide. If you already have a cluster, and you want to launch a node group with your new AMI, see Launching Amazon EKS Worker Nodes in the Amazon EKS User Guide.
The amazon-eks-nodegroup.yaml AWS CloudFormation
template in this repository is provided to launch a node group with the new AMI
ID that is returned when Packer finishes building. Note that there is important
Amazon EC2 user data in this CloudFormation template that bootstraps the worker
nodes when they are launched so that they can register with your Amazon EKS
cluster. Your nodes cannot register properly without this user data.
Compatibility with CloudFormation Template
The CloudFormation template for EKS Nodes is published in the S3 bucket
amazon-eks under the path cloudformation. You can see a list of previous
versions by running aws s3 ls s3://amazon-eks/cloudformation/.
| CloudFormation Version | EKS AMI versions | amazon-vpc-cni-k8s |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-09-27 | amazon-eks-node-(1.14,1.13,1.12,1.11)-v20190927 | v1.5.4 |
| 2019-09-17 | amazon-eks-node-(1.14,1.13,1.12,1.11)-v20190906 | v1.5.3 |
| 2019-02-11 | amazon-eks-node-(1.12,1.11,1.10)-v20190327 | v1.3.2 (for p3dn.24xlarge instances) |
| 2019-02-11 | amazon-eks-node-(1.11,1.10)-v20190220 | v1.3.2 (for p3dn.24xlarge instances) |
| 2019-02-11 | amazon-eks-node-(1.11,1.10)-v20190211 | v1.3.2 (for p3dn.24xlarge instances) |
| 2018-12-10 | amazon-eks-node-(1.11,1.10)-v20181210 | v1.2.1 |
| 2018-11-07 | amazon-eks-node-v25+ | v1.2.1 (for t3 and r5 instances) |
| 2018-08-30 | amazon-eks-node-v23+ | v1.1.0 |
| 2018-08-21 | amazon-eks-node-v23+ | v1.1.0 |
For older versions of the EKS AMI (v20-v22), you can find the CloudFormation
templates in the same bucket under the path s3://amazon-eks/1.10.3/2018-06-05/.
AL2 / Linux Kernel Information
By default, the amazon-eks-ami uses a source_ami_filter that selects the latest hvm AL2 AMI for the given architecture as the base AMI. For more information on what kernel versions are running on published Amazon EKS optimized Linux AMIs, see the public documentation.
When building an AMI, you can set the kernel_version to 4.14 or 5.4 to customize the kernel version. The upgrade_kernel.sh script contains the logic for updating and upgrading the kernel. For Kubernetes versions 1.18 and below, it uses the 4.14 kernel if not set, and it will install the latest patches. For Kubernetes version 1.19 and above, it uses the 5.4 kernel if not set.
Security
For security issues or concerns, please do not open an issue or pull request on GitHub. Please report any suspected or confirmed security issues to AWS Security https://aws.amazon.com/security/vulnerability-reporting/
License Summary
This sample code is made available under a modified MIT license. See the LICENSE file.