The modern cloud-native world relies heavily on Kubernetes for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) simplifies Kubernetes management by offering a managed service, handling the complexities of control plane operations. Yet, deploying and managing the infrastructure manually can still pose challenges in scalability, consistency, and automation. This is where Terraform comes into play.

In this article, we’ll explore how to simplify EKS deployments with Terraform, unlocking the power of automation and infrastructure as code (IaC). By the end of this article, you will understand how to leverage Terraform for provisioning EKS clusters efficiently, improving scalability, and reducing manual work.

Why Use Terraform for AWS EKS?

1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Terraform enables the definition of cloud infrastructure in a declarative manner. This ensures consistency, scalability, and ease of management when deploying complex Kubernetes environments like AWS EKS.

2. Reusability

With modules, Terraform lets you create reusable components. You can build a module for provisioning EKS clusters and reuse it across various environments (e.g., dev, staging, production).

3. Version Control

Terraform configurations can be stored in Git repositories, allowing for version control, collaboration, and rollbacks when needed.

4. Automation

Terraform’s automation capabilities eliminate human error, ensuring that all environments are consistent and reproducible.

Pre-Requisites

Before diving into Terraform and EKS, ensure the following are set up:

• AWS Account: You’ll need an AWS account with appropriate permissions to create EKS clusters.
• AWS CLI: Used to authenticate Terraform with your AWS account.
• Terraform: Installed on your local machine or CI/CD environment.
• kubectl: Installed for managing the Kubernetes cluster once it’s deployed.

Step 1: Configuring Terraform for AWS

Start by creating the Terraform configuration files. Terraform’s declarative approach requires you to define provider settings, resources, and modules for provisioning the required AWS infrastructure.

Provider Configuration

Create a provider.tf file that contains the AWS provider configuration. Here’s an example:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

This specifies that Terraform will use AWS resources in the us-west-2 region. Ensure your AWS credentials are configured correctly using the AWS CLI (aws configure).

Step 2: Define...