Windows worker nodes
Windows Worker Nodes¶
Amazon EKS 1.14 supports Windows Nodes that allow running Windows containers.
In addition to having Windows nodes, a Linux node in the cluster is required to run the VPC resource controller and CoreDNS, as Microsoft doesn't support host-networking mode yet. Thus, a Windows EKS cluster will be a mixed-mode cluster containing Windows nodes and at least one Linux node.
The Linux nodes are critical to the functioning of the cluster, and thus, for a production-grade cluster, it's recommended to have at least two t2.large Linux nodes for HA.
eksctl provides a flag to install the VPC resource controller as part of cluster creation, and a command to install it after a cluster has been created.
Creating a new Windows cluster¶
The config file syntax allows creating a fully-functioning Windows cluster in a single command:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 | # cluster.yaml # An example of ClusterConfig containing Windows and Linux node groups to support Windows workloads --- apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5 kind: ClusterConfig metadata: name: windows-cluster region: us-west-2 nodeGroups: - name: windows-ng amiFamily: WindowsServer2019FullContainer minSize: 2 maxSize: 3 - name: linux-ng instanceType: t2.large minSize: 2 maxSize: 3 |
1 | eksctl create cluster -f cluster.yaml --install-vpc-controllers
|
To create a new cluster without using a config file, issue the following commands:
1 2 3 | eksctl create cluster --name=windows-cluster --node-ami-family=WindowsServer2019CoreContainer eksctl create nodegroup --cluster=windows-cluster --node-ami-family=AmazonLinux2 --nodes-min=2 --node-type=t2.large eksctl utils install-vpc-controllers --name=windows-cluster --approve |
Adding Windows support to an existing Linux cluster¶
To enable running Windows workloads on an existing cluster with Linux nodes (AmazonLinux2 AMI family), you need to add a Windows node group and install the Windows VPC controller:
1 2 | eksctl create nodegroup --cluster=existing-cluster --node-ami-family=WindowsServer2019CoreContainer eksctl utils install-vpc-controllers --name=windows-cluster --approve |
To ensure workloads are scheduled on the right OS, they must have a nodeSelector targeting the OS it must run on:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | # Targeting Windows nodeSelector: beta.kubernetes.io/os: windows beta.kubernetes.io/arch: amd64 # Targeting Linux nodeSelector: beta.kubernetes.io/os: linux beta.kubernetes.io/arch: amd64 |