01-prerequisites.md

Prerequisites

Amazon Web Services

This tutorial leverages the Amazon Web Services to streamline provisioning of the compute infrastructure required to bootstrap a Kubernetes cluster from the ground up. It would cost less then $2 for a 24 hour period that would take to complete this exercise.

The compute resources required for this tutorial exceed the Amazon Web Services free tier. Make sure that you clean up the resource at the end of the activity to avoid incurring unwanted costs.

Amazon Web Services CLI

Install the AWS CLI

Follow the AWS CLI documentation to install and configure the aws command line utility.

Verify the AWS CLI version using:

aws --version

Set a Default Compute Region and Zone

This tutorial assumes a default compute region and zone have been configured.

Go ahead and set a default compute region:

AWS_REGION=us-west-1

aws configure set default.region $AWS_REGION

Running Commands in Parallel with tmux

tmux can be used to run commands on multiple compute instances at the same time. Labs in this tutorial may require running the same commands across multiple compute instances, in those cases consider using tmux and splitting a window into multiple panes with synchronize-panes enabled to speed up the provisioning process.

The use of tmux is optional and not required to complete this tutorial.

Enable synchronize-panes by pressing ctrl+b followed by shift+:. Next type set synchronize-panes on at the prompt. To disable synchronization: set synchronize-panes off.

Next: Installing the Client Tools