Removing an Amazon EKS add-on from a cluster - Amazon EKS
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Removing an Amazon EKS add-on from a cluster

You can remove an Amazon EKS add-on from your cluster using eksctl, the Amazon Web Services Management Console, or the Amazon CLI.

When you remove an Amazon EKS add-on from a cluster:

  • There is no downtime for the functionality that the add-on provides.

  • If you are using IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) and the add-on has an IAM role associated with it, the IAM role isn't removed.

  • If you are using Pod Identities, any Pod Identity Associations owned by the add-on are removed. If you specify the --preserve option to the Amazon CLI, the associations are preserved.

  • Amazon EKS stops managing settings for the add-on.

  • The console stops notifying you when new versions are available.

  • You can't update the add-on using any Amazon tools or APIs.

  • You can choose to leave the add-on software on your cluster so that you can self-manage it, or you can remove the add-on software from your cluster. You should only remove the add-on software from your cluster if there are no resources on your cluster are dependent on the functionality that the add-on provides.

Prerequisites

Complete the following before you create an add-on:

  • An existing Amazon EKS cluster. To deploy one, see Get started with Amazon EKS.

  • Check if your add-on requires an IAM role. For more information, see

  • Version 0.189.0 or later of the eksctl command line tool installed on your device or Amazon CloudShell. To install or update eksctl, see Installation in the eksctl documentation..

Procedure

You can remove an Amazon EKS add-on using eksctl, the Amazon Web Services Management Console, or the Amazon CLI. If the add-on requires an IAM role, see the details for the specific add-on in Available Amazon EKS add-ons from Amazon for details about creating the role.

You have two options when removing an Amazon EKS add-on.

  • Preserve add-on software on your cluster – This option removes Amazon EKS management of any settings. It also removes the ability for Amazon EKS to notify you of updates and automatically update the Amazon EKS add-on after you initiate an update. However, it preserves the add-on software on your cluster. This option makes the add-on a self-managed installation, rather than an Amazon EKS add-on. With this option, there's no downtime for the add-on.

  • Remove add-on software entirely from your cluster – We recommend that you remove the Amazon EKS add-on from your cluster only if there are no resources on your cluster that are dependent on it.

eksctl
To remove an Amazon EKS add-on using eksctl
  1. Determine the current add-ons installed on your cluster. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster.

    eksctl get addon --cluster my-cluster

    An example output is as follows.

    NAME VERSION STATUS ISSUES IAMROLE UPDATE AVAILABLE coredns v1.8.7-eksbuild.2 ACTIVE 0 kube-proxy v1.23.7-eksbuild.1 ACTIVE 0 vpc-cni v1.10.4-eksbuild.1 ACTIVE 0 [...]

    Your output might look different, depending on which add-ons and versions that you have on your cluster.

  2. Remove the add-on. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster and name-of-add-on with the name of the add-on returned in the output of the previous step that you want to remove. If you remove the --preserve option, in addition to Amazon EKS no longer managing the add-on, the add-on software is deleted from your cluster.

    eksctl delete addon --cluster my-cluster --name name-of-addon --preserve

For more information about removing add-ons, see Deleting addons in the eksctl documentation.

Amazon Web Services Management Console
To remove an Amazon EKS add-on using the Amazon Web Services Management Console
  1. Open the Amazon EKS console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/eks/home#/clusters.

  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Clusters.

  3. Choose the name of the cluster that you want to remove the Amazon EKS add-on for.

  4. Choose the Add-ons tab.

  5. Choose the add-on that you want to remove.

  6. Choose Remove.

  7. In the Remove: name of addon confirmation dialog box, do the following:

    1. If you want Amazon EKS to stop managing settings for the add-on, select Preserve on cluster. Do this if you want to retain the add-on software on your cluster. This is so that you can manage all of the settings of the add-on on your own.

    2. Enter the add-on name.

    3. Choose Remove.

Amazon CLI
Prerequisite

Version 0.189.0 or later of the eksctl command line tool installed on your device or Amazon CloudShell. To install or update eksctl, see Installation in the eksctl documentation.

To remove an Amazon EKS add-on using the Amazon CLI
  1. See a list of installed add-ons. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster.

    aws eks list-addons --cluster-name my-cluster

    An example output is as follows.

    { "addons": [ "coredns", "kube-proxy", "vpc-cni", "name-of-addon" ] }
  2. Remove the installed add-on. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster and name-of-add-on with the name of the add-on that you want to remove. Removing --preserve deletes the add-on software from your cluster.

    aws eks delete-addon --cluster-name my-cluster --addon-name name-of-addon --preserve

    The abbreviated example output is as follows.

    { "addon": { "addonName": "name-of-add-on", "clusterName": "my-cluster", "status": "DELETING", [...]
  3. Check the status of the removal. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster and name-of-addon with the name of the add-on that you're removing.

    aws eks describe-addon --cluster-name my-cluster --addon-name name-of-addon

    After the add-on is removed, the example output is as follows.

    An error occurred (ResourceNotFoundException) when calling the DescribeAddon operation: No addon: name-of-addon found in cluster: my-cluster