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Tagging your Amazon EKS resources

You can use tags to help you manage your Amazon EKS resources. This topic provides an overview of the tags function and shows how you can create tags.

Tag basics

A tag is a label that you assign to an Amazon resource. Each tag consists of a key and an optional value.

With tags, you can categorize your Amazon resources. For example, you can categorize resources by purpose, owner, or environment. When you have many resources of the same type, you can use the tags that you assigned to a specific resource to quickly identify that resource. For example, you can define a set of tags for your Amazon EKS clusters to help you track each cluster's owner and stack level. We recommend that you devise a consistent set of tag keys for each resource type. You can then search and filter the resources based on the tags that you add.

After you add a tag, you can edit tag keys and values or remove tags from a resource at any time. If you delete a resource, any tags for the resource are also deleted.

Tags don't have any semantic meaning to Amazon EKS and are interpreted strictly as a string of characters. You can set the value of a tag to an empty string. However, you can't set the value of a tag to null. If you add a tag that has the same key as an existing tag on that resource, the new value overwrites the earlier value.

If you use Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM), you can control which users in your Amazon account have permission to manage tags.

Tagging your resources

The following Amazon EKS resources support tags:

You can tag these resources using the following:

When you use some resource-creating actions, you can also specify tags for the resource at the same time that you create it. If tags can't be applied while the resource is being created, the resource fails to be created. This mechanism ensures that resources that you intend to tag are either created with the tags that you specify or not created at all. If you tag resources when you create them, you don't need to run custom tagging scripts after you create the resource.

Tags don't propagate to other resources that are associated with the resource that you create. For example, Fargate profile tags don't propagate to other resources that are associated with the Fargate profile, such as the Pods that are scheduled with it.

Tag restrictions

The following restrictions apply to tags:

Tagging your resources for billing

When you apply tags to Amazon EKS clusters, you can use them for cost allocation in your Cost & Usage Reports. The metering data in your Cost & Usage Reports shows usage across all of your Amazon EKS clusters. For more information, see Amazon cost and usage report in the Amazon Billing User Guide.

The Amazon generated cost allocation tag, specifically aws:eks:cluster-name, lets you break down Amazon EC2 instance costs by individual Amazon EKS cluster in Cost Explorer. However, this tag doesn't capture the control plane expenses. The tag is automatically added to Amazon EC2 instances that participate in an Amazon EKS cluster. This behavior happens regardless of whether the instances are provisioned using Amazon EKS managed node groups, Karpenter, or directly with Amazon EC2. This specific tag doesn't count towards the 50 tags limit. To use the tag, the account owner must activate it in the Amazon Billing console or by using the API. When an Amazon Organizations management account owner activates the tag, it's also activated for all organization member accounts.

You can also organize your billing information based on resources that have the same tag key values. For example, you can tag several resources with a specific application name, and then organize your billing information. That way, you can see the total cost of that application across several services. For more information about setting up a cost allocation report with tags, see The Monthly Cost Allocation Report in the Amazon Billing User Guide.

Cost Explorer is a reporting tool that's available as part of the Amazon Free Tier. You can use Cost Explorer to view charts of your Amazon EKS resources from the last 13 months. You can also forecast how much you're likely to spend for the next three months. You can see patterns in how much you spend on Amazon resources over time. For example, you can use it to identify areas that need further inquiry and see trends that you can use to understand your costs. You also can specify time ranges for the data, and view time data by day or by month.

Working with tags using the console

Using the Amazon EKS console, you can manage the tags that are associated with new or existing clusters and managed node groups.

When you select a resource-specific page in the Amazon EKS console, the page displays a list of those resources. For example, if you select Clusters from the left navigation pane, the console displays a list of Amazon EKS clusters. When you select a resource from one of these lists (for example, a specific cluster) that supports tags, you can view and manage its tags on the Tags tab.

You can also use Tag Editor in the Amazon Web Services Management Console, which provides a unified way to manage your tags. For more information, see Tagging your Amazon resources with Tag Editor in the Amazon Tag Editor User Guide.

Adding tags on a resource on creation

You can add tags to Amazon EKS clusters, managed node groups, and Fargate profiles when you create them. For more information, see Creating an Amazon EKS cluster.

Adding and deleting tags on a resource

You can add or delete the tags that are associated with your clusters directly from the resource's page.

Working with tags using the CLI, API, or eksctl

Use the following Amazon CLI commands or Amazon EKS API operations to add, update, list, and delete the tags for your resources. You can only use eksctl to add tags while simultaneously creating the new resources with one command.

The following examples show how to tag or untag resources using the Amazon CLI.

Example 1: Tag an existing cluster

The following command tags an existing cluster.

aws eks tag-resource --resource-arn resource_ARN --tags team=devs

Example 2: Untag an existing cluster

The following command deletes a tag from an existing cluster.

aws eks untag-resource --resource-arn resource_ARN --tag-keys tag_key

Example 3: List tags for a resource

The following command lists the tags that are associated with an existing resource.

aws eks list-tags-for-resource --resource-arn resource_ARN

When you use some resource-creating actions, you can specify tags at the same time that you create the resource. The following actions support specifying a tag when you create a resource.

* If you want to also tag the Amazon EC2 instances when you create a managed node group, create the managed node group using a launch template. For more information, see Tagging Amazon EC2 instances. If your instances already exist, you can manually tag the instances. For more information, see Tagging your resources in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.