AWS Load Balancer Controller

By leveraging CAPI cluster lifecycle hooks, this handler deploys the AWS Load Balancer Controller on the new cluster at the AfterControlPlaneInitialized phase.

The AWS Load Balancer Controller manages AWS Application Load Balancers (ALB) and Network Load Balancers (NLB) for Kubernetes services and ingresses.

Deployment of this controller is opt-in via the provider-specific cluster configuration.

The hook uses the Cluster API Add-on Provider for Helm to deploy the AWS Load Balancer Controller resources.

Prerequisites

• AWS EKS cluster
• IAM role with necessary permissions for the AWS Load Balancer Controller

Example

To enable deployment of the AWS Load Balancer Controller on a cluster, specify the following values:

apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: <NAME>
spec:
  topology:
    variables:
      - name: clusterConfig
        value:
          addons:
            ingress:
              provider: "aws-lb-controller"

IAM Permissions

The AWS Load Balancer Controller requires specific IAM permissions to manage load balancers. See AWS Load Balancer IAM Policies for the full list of permissions. The provided configuration assumes the permissions will be attached to the Nodes.

If attaching these policies to the non-default instance-profile, you may specify the name in the Cluster using the following configuration:

        - name: workerConfig
          value:
            eks:
              ...
              iamInstanceProfile: custom.nodes.cluster-api-provider-aws.sigs.k8s.io

Usage

Once deployed, the AWS Load Balancer Controller can be used to:

1. Create Application Load Balancers (ALB) for Kubernetes services using the service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: nlb annotation
2. Create Network Load Balancers (NLB) for Kubernetes services using the service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: nlb annotation
3. Manage Ingress resources with the kubernetes.io/ingress.class: alb annotation
4. Configure Target Group Bindings for advanced load balancer configurations

Example Service

See AWS Load Balancer NLB Example

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-service
  annotations:
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerClass: service.k8s.aws/nlb
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
  selector:
    app: my-app

See other examples in AWS Load Balancer Example docs.