Load Balancer Controller Installation¶

Kubernetes version requirements¶

AWS Load Balancer Controller v2.0.0~v2.1.3 requires Kubernetes 1.15+
AWS Load Balancer Controller v2.2.0+ requires Kubernetes 1.16+

Existing AWS ALB Ingress Controller users

AWS ALB Ingress controller must be uninstalled before installing AWS Load Balancer controller. Please follow our migration guide to do migration.

Security updates

The controller doesn't receive security updates automatically. You need to manually upgrade to a newer version when it becomes available.

non-EKS cluster

You can run the controller on a non-EKS cluster, for example kops or vanilla k8s. Here are the things to consider -

In lieu of IAM for service account, you will have to manually attach the IAM permissions to your worker nodes IAM roles
Ensure subnets are tagged appropriately for auto-discovery to work
For IP targets, pods must have IPs from the VPC subnets. You can configure amazon-vpc-cni-k8s plugin for this purpose.

IAM Permissions¶

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.

Create IAM OIDC provider

eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider \
    --region <region-code> \
    --cluster <your-cluster-name> \
    --approve

Download IAM policy for the AWS Load Balancer Controller

curl -o iam-policy.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.2.1/docs/install/iam_policy.json

Create an IAM policy called AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy

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

Take note of the policy ARN that is returned

Create a IAM role and ServiceAccount for the AWS Load Balancer controller, use the ARN from the step above

eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
--cluster=<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

Setup IAM manually¶

If not setting up IAM for ServiceAccount, apply the IAM policies from the following URL at minimum.

curl -o iam-policy.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.2.1/docs/install/iam_policy.json

Add Controller to Cluster¶

Use Fargate

If you want to run the controller on Fargate, use Helm chart since it does not depend on the cert-manager.

Via Helm

Detailed Instructions¶

Follow the instructions in aws-load-balancer-controller helm chart.

Summary¶

Add the EKS chart repo to helm

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

Install the TargetGroupBinding CRDs if upgrading the chart via helm upgrade.
```
kubectl apply -k "github.com/aws/eks-charts/stable/aws-load-balancer-controller//crds?ref=master"
```
Tip

The helm install command automatically applies the CRDs, but helm upgrade doesn't.

Install the helm chart if using IAM roles for service accounts. NOTE you need to specify both of 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=<cluster-name> --set serviceAccount.create=false --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller

Install the helm chart if not using IAM roles for service accounts

helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller -n kube-system --set clusterName=<cluster-name>

Via YAML manifests

Install cert-manager¶

For Kubernetes 1.16+:

kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.0.2/cert-manager.yaml

For Kubernetes <1.16:

kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.0.2/cert-manager-legacy.yaml

Apply YAML¶

Download spec for load balancer controller.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.2.1/docs/install/v2_2_1_full.yaml

Edit the saved yaml file, go to the Deployment spec, and set the controller --cluster-name arg value to your EKS cluster name

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
. . . 
name: aws-load-balancer-controller
namespace: kube-system
spec:
    . . . 
    template:
        spec:
            containers:
                - args:
                    - --cluster-name=<INSERT_CLUSTER_NAME>

If you use IAM roles for service accounts, we recommend that you delete the ServiceAccount from the yaml spec. This will preserve the eksctl created iamserviceaccount if you delete the installation section from the yaml spec.
```
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
```
Apply the yaml file
```
kubectl apply -f v2_2_1_full.yaml
```