How to Install AWS Load Balancer Controller in EKS Cluster

AWS Load Balancer Controller (AWS ALB Ingress Controller) is a controller to help manage Elastic Load Balancers for a Kubernetes cluster.

• It satisfies Kubernetes Ingress resources by provisioning Application Load Balancers.
• It satisfies Kubernetes Service resources by provisioning Network Load Balancers.

In this tutorial, we will cover how to install the AWS Load Balancer Controller in your EKS cluster and deploy a sample application.

Prerequisites

• An existing Amazon EKS cluster.
• The eksctl command line tool installed on your computer. To install or update eksctl, see The eksctl command line utility.
• The kubectl command line tool installed on your computer. The version must be the same, or up to two versions later than your cluster version. To install or upgrade kubectl, see Installing kubectl.
• The helm command line tool. To install or upgrade helm, see Installing helm

1./ Setup IAM role for service accounts

The controller runs on the worker nodes, so it needs access to the AWS ALB/NLB resources via IAM permissions. The IAM permissions can either be setup via IAM roles for ServiceAccount or can be attached directly to the worker node IAM roles.

0- Set the below values to your default AWS region, your account id and your EKS cluster name

AWS_ACCOUNT_ID=YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID_HERE # OR $(aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text)
AWS_REGION=YOUR_AWS_REGION_HERE
EKS_CLUSTER_NAME=YOUR_EKS_CLUSTER_NAME_HERE

1- Create IAM OIDC provider

eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider \
    --region ${AWS_REGION} \
    --cluster ${EKS_CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --approve

2- Download IAM policy for the AWS Load Balancer Controller

curl -fsSL -o iam-policy.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.4.0/docs/install/iam_policy.json

3- Create an IAM policy called AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy

aws iam create-policy \
    --policy-name AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
    --policy-document file://iam-policy.json

4- Create a IAM role and ServiceAccount for the AWS Load Balancer controller using eksctl tool

eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
    --cluster=${EKS_CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --namespace=kube-system \
    --name=aws-load-balancer-controller \
    --attach-policy-arn=arn:aws:iam::${AWS_ACCOUNT_ID}:policy/AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
    --override-existing-serviceaccounts \
    --approve \
    --region ${AWS_REGION}

2./ Install AWS Load Balancer Controller using Helm

1- Add the EKS chart repo to helm

helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

2- Install the TargetGroupBinding custom resource definitions

kubectl apply -k "github.com/aws/eks-charts/stable/aws-load-balancer-controller//crds?ref=master"

3- Install the helm chart by specifying the chart values serviceAccount.create=false and serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller

helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller \
    -n kube-system \
    --set clusterName=${EKS_CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --set serviceAccount.create=false \
    --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller

4- Verify that the AWS Load Balancer controller is installed.

kubectl get deployment -n kube-system aws-load-balancer-controller

NAME                           READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
aws-load-balancer-controller   2/2     2            2           84s

3./ Verify the AWS Load Balancer Controller

To verify that the AWS Load Balancer Controller creates an Application Load Balancer as a result of the Ingress object, we will deploy the below example

1- Deploy all the blue application resources (namespace, service, deployment)

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/faudeltn/Kubernetes/master/EKS-AWSALBIngress/1-nginx-blue-ns.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/faudeltn/Kubernetes/master/EKS-AWSALBIngress/2-nginx-blue-deployment.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/faudeltn/Kubernetes/master/EKS-AWSALBIngress/3-nginx-blue-service.yaml

2- List all the resources to ensure they were created.

kubectl get -n nginx-blue deploy,svc

NAME                                READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/nginx-deploy-blue   1/1     1            1           24s

NAME                 TYPE       CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
service/nginx-blue   NodePort   10.100.152.96           80:31525/TCP   21s

3- Download the blue application ingress manifest locally and change the host value to your domain name.

curl -fsSL -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/faudeltn/Kubernetes/master/EKS-AWSALBIngress/4-nginx-blue-ingress.yaml

spec:
  rules:
  - host: "blue.yallalabs.com" #CHANGE ME 
    http:
      paths:
      - pathType: Prefix
        path: "/"

4- Deploy the ingress resource

kubectl create -f 4-nginx-blue-ingress.yaml

5- After few seconds, verify that the Ingress resource is enabled:

kubectl get ingress nginx-blue -n nginx-blue
NAME         CLASS    HOSTS                ADDRESS                                                             PORTS   AGE
nginx-blue      blue.yallalabs.com   k8s-ingressdemo-4234ef1652-1773112961.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com   80      48s

6- From your AWS Management Console, if you navigate to the EC2 dashboard and the select Load Balancers from the menu on the left-pane, you should see the details of the ALB instance similar to the following.

From the left-pane, if you select Target Groups and look at the registered targets under the Targets tab, you will see the instance ID and ports of the sample app pods listed.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned how to install AWS Load Balancer Controller in your EKS Cluster. For more details you can check the AWS Load Balancer Controller official documentation.

Resources

• Installing the AWS Load Balancer Controller add-on
• AWS Load Balancer Controller Installation Guide
• AWS Load Balancer Controller configuration options

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