Summary

In this chapter, we explored the basic requirements for any EC2-based worker node, including the need to configure an IAM role, the Kubernetes agents (kubelet, and so on), and security groups to allow communication with the EKS control plane endpoint.

We then learned how you can use Amazon Linux and Bottlerocket (a secure container operating system developed by AWS) AMIs to create self-managed node groups using the AWS Console/CLI, CloudFormation, and eksctl. It’s important to understand there are several options when it comes to choosing operating systems, from Amazon EKS-optimized Linux and Bottlerocket through to the completely customized operating systems you define. Amazon Linux is the easiest operating system choice as images are created and managed by AWS, and it will also allow access to the standard Linux kernel if you want to make changes. Bottlerocket is more secure but is quite a different architecture from standard Linux kernels, so requires a lot more...