Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Help improve this page

Want to contribute to this user guide? Choose the Edit this page on GitHub link that is located in the right pane of every page. Your contributions will help make our user guide better for everyone.

Create an EKS Auto Mode Cluster with the eksctl CLI

This topic shows you how to create an Amazon EKS Auto Mode cluster using the eksctl command line interface (CLI). You can create an Auto Mode cluster either by running a single CLI command or by applying a YAML configuration file. Both methods provide the same functionality, with the YAML approach offering more granular control over cluster settings.

The eksctl CLI simplifies the process of creating and managing EKS Auto Mode clusters by handling the underlying Amazon resource creation and configuration. Before proceeding, ensure you have the necessary Amazon credentials and permissions configured on your local machine. This guide assumes you’re familiar with basic Amazon EKS concepts and have already installed the required CLI tools.

Create an EKS Auto Mode cluster with a CLI command

You must have the aws and eksctl tools installed. You must be logged into the Amazon CLI with sufficent permissions to manage Amazon resources including: EC2 instances, EC2 networking, EKS clusters, and IAM roles. For more information, see Set up to use Amazon EKS.

Run the following command to create a new EKS Auto Mode cluster with

eksctl create cluster --name=<cluster-name> --enable-auto-mode

Create an EKS Auto Mode cluster with a YAML file

You must have the aws and eksctl tools installed. You must be logged into the Amazon CLI with sufficent permissions to manage Amazon resources including: EC2 instances, EC2 networking, EKS clusters, and IAM roles. For more information, see Set up to use Amazon EKS.

Review the EKS Auto Mode configuration options in the sample ClusterConfig resource below. For the full ClusterConfig specification, see the eksctl documentation.

Amazon suggests enabling EKS Auto Mode. If this is your first time creating an EKS Auto Mode cluster, leave the nodeRoleARN unspecified to create a Node IAM Role for EKS Auto Mode. If you already have a Node IAM Role in your Amazon account, Amazon suggests reusing it.

Amazon suggests not specifying any value for nodePools. EKS Auto Mode will create default node pools. You can use the Kubernetes API to create additional node pools.

# cluster.yaml
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: <cluster-name>
  region: <aws-region>

iam:
  # ARN of the Cluster IAM Role
  # optional, eksctl creates a new role if not supplied
  # suggested to use one Cluster IAM Role per account
  serviceRoleARN: <arn-cluster-iam-role>

autoModeConfig:
  # defaults to false
  enabled: boolean
  # optional, defaults to [general-purpose, system].
  # suggested to leave unspecified
  # To disable creation of nodePools, set it to the empty array ([]).
  nodePools: []string
  # optional, eksctl creates a new role if this is not supplied
  # and nodePools are present.
  nodeRoleARN: string

Save the ClusterConfig file as cluster.yaml, and use the following command to create the cluster:

eksctl create cluster -f cluster.yaml