CoreOS recently announced the public availability of Tectonic – a pure Kubernetes platform (more details here). It is free to try up to 10 nodes. The platform promises to be an always-current version of Kubernetes with a secure and easy mechanism to patch and upgrade to latest versions.

In this tutorial, we will setup a Kubernetes cluster with Tectonic in AWS and do a quick walkthrough of the key features. Please note that we won’t be doing a production grade installation but a quick one for demo purposes.

Before We Start

Before we go ahead and start setting up the cluster, we will create a domain name and create a hosted zone in AWS Route53. This will enable us to reach the console with an easy address. Also, a hosted zone is a mandatory field when creating a cluster using Tectonic. If you have a domain name in AWS, then all you need to do is create a hosted zone for the domain name and move to the next step. If your domain name was purchased outside of AWS, then you would need to update the name server settings. Create a hosted zone for your domain name in AWS and click on it to get details. These name servers should be updated in the console where you purchased it. Propagation of a name server takes between 24-48 hours.

To get started you will need following:

• An account where you have purchased Tectonic (free for up to 10 nodes). Once you have bought it, you would also get a software license key as well as a pull secret, which will be needed in subsequent steps.
• A pair of AWS keys with access to create infrastructure or a temporary session token.
• A pair of SSH keys and a public key updated in AWS EC2 (network and security —> Key pairs) and in the zone that you intend to create the cluster.
• Certificates and keys if you plan on using your own.
• The hosted zone and the domain name as mentioned earlier in this post.

For the setup, you will need to download the Tectonic installer and run it on your local machine. Now you can follow through the screencast below (or available here or here) to walk through the setup process and a quick overview of the Tectonic console for Kubernetes.

#cloud #tutorial #aws #kubernetes cluster #tectonic