AWS Minikube

AWS Minikube is a single node Kubernetes deployment in AWS. It creates an EC2 host and deploys the Kubernetes cluster using Kubeadm tool. It provides full integration with AWS. It is also able to handle ELB load balancers, EBS disks, Route53 domains and other AWS resources.

• Updates
• Prerequisites and Dependencies
• Configuration
• Creating AWS Minikube
• Deleting AWS Minikube
• Using custom AMI Image
• Add-ons
• Custom Add-ons
• Tagging
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • How to access Kubernetes Dashboard

Updates

• 16.6.2024 Update to Kubernetes 1.30.2
• 19.5.2024 Update to Kubernetes 1.30.1 + Ingress and External DNS add-on updates
• 29.4.2024 Update to Kubernetes 1.30.0
• 31.3.2024 Update to Kubernetes 1.29.3 + Ingress and External DNS add-on updates
• 18.2.2024 Update to Kubernetes 1.29.2 + Ingress add-on update
• 30.12.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.29.0
• 26.11.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.28.4
• 12.11.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.28.3 + Update some add-ons
• 15.10.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.28.2 + Update some add-ons
• 16.4.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.27.1 + Use external AWS Cloud Provider
• 1.4.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.26.3 + update add-ons (Ingress-NGINX Controller, External DNS, Metrics Server, AWS EBS CSI Driver)
• 4.3.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.26.2 + update add-ons (Ingress-NGINX Controller)
• 22.1.2023 Update to Kubernetes 1.26.1 + update add-ons (External DNS)
• 10.12.2022 Update to Kubernetes 1.26.0 + update add-ons (AWS EBS CSI Driver, Metrics server)
• 13.11.2022 Update to Kubernetes 1.25.4 + update add-ons
• 2.10.2022 Update to Kubernetes 1.25.2 + update add-ons
• 26.8.2022 Update to Kubernetes 1.25.0 + Calico upgrade

Prerequisites and Dependencies

AWS Minikube deploys into an existing VPC / public subnet. If you don't have your VPC / subnet yet, you can use this configuration to create one.

• The VPC / subnet should be properly linked with Internet Gateway (IGW) and should have DNS and DHCP enabled.
• Hosted DNS zone configured in Route53 (in case the zone is private you have to use IP address to copy kubeconfig and access the cluster). To deploy AWS Minikube there are no other dependencies apart from Terraform. Kubeadm is used only on the EC2 host and doesn't have to be installed locally.

Configuration

The configuration is done through Terraform variables. Example tfvars file is part of this repo and is named example.tfvars. Change the variables to match your environment / requirements before running terraform apply ....

Option	Explanation	Example
aws_region	AWS region which should be used	eu-central-1
cluster_name	Name of the Kubernetes cluster (also used to name different AWS resources)	my-minikube
aws_instance_type	AWS EC2 instance type	t2.medium
ssh_public_key	SSH key to connect to the remote machine	~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
aws_subnet_id	Subnet ID where Minikube should run	subnet-8d3407e5
ami_image_id	ID of the AMI image which should be used. If empty, the latest CentOS 7 image will be used. See README.md for AMI image requirements.	ami-b81dbfc5
hosted_zone	DNS zone which should be used	my-domain.com
hosted_zone_private	Is the DNS zone public or private	false
addons	List of add-ons which should be installed	[ "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scholzj/aws-minikube/master/addons//storage-class.yaml" ]
tags	Tags which should be applied to all resources	{ Hello = "World" }
ssh_access_cidr	Network CIDR from which SSH access will be allowed	0.0.0.0/0
api_access_cidr	Network CIDR from which API access will be allowed	0.0.0.0/0

Creating AWS Minikube

To create AWS Minikube,

• Export AWS credentials into environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• Apply Terraform configuration:

terraform apply --var-file example.tfvars

Deleting AWS Minikube

To delete AWS Minikube,

• Export AWS credentials into environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• Destroy Terraform configuration:

terraform destroy --var-file example.tfvars

Using custom AMI Image

AWS Minikube is built and tested on CentOS 7. But gives you the possibility to use their own AMI images. Your custom AMI image should be based on RPM distribution and should be similar to Cent OS 7. When ami_image_id variable is not specified, the latest available CentOS 7 image will be used.

Add-ons

Currently, following add-ons are supported:

• Kubernetes dashboard
• Heapster for resource monitoring
• Storage class and CSI driver for automatic provisioning of persistent volumes
• External DNS
• Ingress

The add-ons will be installed automatically based on the Terraform variables.

Custom Add-ons

Custom add-ons can be added if needed. From every URL in the addons list, the initialization scripts will automatically call kubectl -f apply <Addon URL> to deploy it. Minikube is using RBAC. So the custom add-ons have to be RBAC ready.

Tagging

If you need to tag resources created by your Kubernetes cluster (EBS volumes, ELB load balancers etc.) check this AWS Lambda function which can do the tagging.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to access Kubernetes Dashboard

The Kubernetes Dashboard add-on is by default not exposed to the internet. This is intentional for security reasons (no authentication / authorization) and to save costs for Amazon AWS ELB load balancer.

You can access the dashboard easily fro any computer with installed and configured kubectl:

1. From command line start kubectl proxy
2. Go to your browser and open http://127.0.0.1:8001/ui