EKS networking with VPC CNI in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

EKS Networking with VPC CNI

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple Amazon EKS cluster with networking configured using the VPC CNI plugin. This plugin allows your Kubernetes pods to have IP addresses from your VPC, enabling seamless communication with other AWS services.We will create the necessary VPC, subnets, and an EKS cluster configured to use the VPC CNI plugin.

🎯 Goal: Build an Amazon EKS cluster with networking configured using the VPC CNI plugin. You will create the VPC and subnets, configure the cluster networking, and enable the VPC CNI plugin for pod networking.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a VPC with exactly two subnets

Define a variable for the cluster name

Create an EKS cluster resource using the VPC and subnets

Enable the VPC CNI plugin in the cluster configuration

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This project models how to configure networking for an Amazon EKS cluster using the VPC CNI plugin, which is essential for pod networking in AWS cloud environments.

💼 Career

Understanding EKS networking and VPC CNI is critical for cloud engineers and DevOps professionals managing Kubernetes clusters on AWS.

1

Create a VPC with two subnets

Create a variable called vpc that defines a VPC with CIDR block 10.0.0.0/16 and two subnets with CIDR blocks 10.0.1.0/24 and 10.0.2.0/24.

AWS

# Your code here to create the vpc variable with two subnets

Need a hint?

Define a dictionary named vpc with keys cidr and subnets. The subnets key should hold a list of two dictionaries each with a cidr key.

2

Define the EKS cluster name variable

Create a variable called cluster_name and set it to the string "my-eks-cluster".

AWS

vpc = {
    "cidr": "10.0.0.0/16",
    "subnets": [
        {"cidr": "10.0.1.0/24"},
        {"cidr": "10.0.2.0/24"}
    ]
}
# Your code here to define cluster_name

Need a hint?

Simply assign the string "my-eks-cluster" to the variable cluster_name.

3

Create the EKS cluster resource

Create a variable called eks_cluster that is a dictionary with keys name, vpc, and subnets. Set name to cluster_name, vpc to the vpc variable, and subnets to the list of subnets inside vpc.

AWS

vpc = {
    "cidr": "10.0.0.0/16",
    "subnets": [
        {"cidr": "10.0.1.0/24"},
        {"cidr": "10.0.2.0/24"}
    ]
}

cluster_name = "my-eks-cluster"
# Your code here to create eks_cluster dictionary

Need a hint?

Create a dictionary named eks_cluster with keys name, vpc, and subnets. Use the existing variables for values.

4

Enable the VPC CNI plugin in the cluster configuration

Add a key called networking to the eks_cluster dictionary. Set it to a dictionary with key cni_plugin and value "vpc-cni".

AWS

vpc = {
    "cidr": "10.0.0.0/16",
    "subnets": [
        {"cidr": "10.0.1.0/24"},
        {"cidr": "10.0.2.0/24"}
    ]
}

cluster_name = "my-eks-cluster"

eks_cluster = {
    "name": cluster_name,
    "vpc": vpc,
    "subnets": vpc["subnets"]
}
# Your code here to add networking with VPC CNI plugin

Need a hint?

Add a networking key to eks_cluster with a dictionary value containing cni_plugin set to "vpc-cni".