This note contains the steps that need to be taken to configure your local kubectl to work with Kubernetes clusters running in AWS EKS.

The steps are very simple. Please note that this example assumes that you have multiple AWS profiles configured in the ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials files. If there is only default profile than there is no need to provide the profile-name as an argument to the aws cli command

1. List clusters available

   aws eks list-clusters --profile profile-name
   

   The sample output is the following:

   {
    "clusters": [
        "Cluster-Name-1",
        "Cluster-Name-2",
        "Cluster-Name-3"
    ]
   }
   

2. Run the following to update the local kubeconfig specifying the AWS region, profile and the name of the cluster.

   aws eks --region aws-region-name --profile profile-name update-kubeconfig --name Cluster-Name-1
   aws eks --region aws-region-name --profile profile-name update-kubeconfig --name Cluster-Name-2
   

   Sample output is the following:

   Added new context arn:aws:eks:aws-region:12345678:cluster/Cluster-Name-1 to /Users/username/.kube/config
   

3. Verify the configuration

   kubectl get svc
   

If you are adding multiple clusters, than you’ll have multiple contexts configured. The default will be the last added. Run the following command to list contexts:

kubectl config get-contexts

You’ll see the list of contexts. You can use the following to switch between them:

kubectl config use-context arn:aws:eks:aws-region:12345678:cluster/Cluster-Name-1

Now you can list the nodes, pods, etc:

kubectl get nodes
kubectl get pods
kubectl get services