Amazon EKS - Launch Kubernetes Cluster and Deploy Wordpress

Lab Overview

Amazon EKS provides a fully managed Kubernetes control plane. Launching a fully operational EKS cluster is simple and can be accomplished in a matter of approximately 10 minutes. 

In this Lab we will launch and EKS cluster with a single Worker Node attached. You will then be guided through the process of deploying a containerized version of Wordpress, consisting of a frontend web server running Apache, and a backend database running MySQL. Both containers will leverage persistent volumes for storage, leveraging EBS GP2 volumes as the underlying storage mechanism. 

This Lab is for anyone that is interested in managing and configuring an Amazon EKS cluster, and understanding how to deploy applications within Kubernetes.

Lab Objectives

Upon completion of this Lab, you will be able to:

• Install and configure EKS Kubernetes command line utilities for connecting and authenticating against an EKS cluster
• Query and inspect AWS EC2 instances and EBS volumes
• Update and configure Kubernetes declarative YAML files to deploy a containerized Wordpress application 
• Be able to manage and maintain Kubernetes cluster resources, such as Deployments, Pods, Services, and Secrets

Lab Prerequisites

You should be familiar with:

• Be comfortable with SSH to remotely administer a Linux based server
• Basic Linux administration

Lab Environment

This Lab will start with the following AWS resources being provisioned automatically for you:

• EKS Cluster
• EKS Worker Node instance (single)
• EKS Launcher instance
• EKS SSH Managment instance
• EBS volumes for persistent storage 

To achieve the Lab end state, you will be walked through the process of:

• Downloading and installing EKS Kubernetes utilities
• Update and configure Kubernetes declarative YAML files to deploy a Wordpress containerized application 
• Deploy and maintain a containerized Wordpress application using Kubernetes cluster resources, such as Deployments, Pods, Services, and Secrets using the kubectl and associated utlities
• Confirm that the containerized Wordpress application is fully operational
• Teardown and cleanup all Kubernetes cluster resources, such as Deployments, Pods, Services, and Secrets 

Updates

July 2nd, 2019 - Refactored part of the provisioning script to improve Lab maintainability

April 11th, 2019 - Improved AWS CLI commands to work with the latest EKS node naming convention

February 20th, 2019 - Updated the EC2 launch instance role to have all the permissions required by the latest eksctl CloudFormation templates

January 10th, 2019 - Added a validation Lab Step to check the work you perform in the Lab