Consul EKS

This project contains the basics for deploying Consul on an AWS EKS cluster using Terraform and consul-k8s.

Requirements

• aws
  • AWS credentials
• consul-k8s
• kubectl
• terraform

Note

The following steps create AWS resources that will incur costs in your AWS account.

Usage

1. Initialize terraform

   terraform init

2. Deploy the EKS cluster via Terraform. This step also generates the values.yaml file that is used to install Consul.

   terraform apply -var name=$USER

3. Configure kubectl to target your newly minted EKS cluster.

   $(terraform output -json | jq -r '.update_kubeconfig_cmd.value')

4. View the nodes in your EKS cluster.

   kubectl get nodes

5. Deploy Consul via consul-k8s.

   consul-k8s install -namespace default -config-file values.yaml

6. View the Consul deployment in K8s.

   kubectl get pods

7. Export environment variables to interact with Consul

   export CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR=https://localhost:8501
   export CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN=$(terraform output -json | jq -r '.consul_http_token.value')
   export CONSUL_HTTP_SSL_VERIFY=false

8. Interact with your Consul deployment. The easiest way to do this is to use kubectl port-forward to route traffic directly from localhost to the pods running in your EKS cluster.

   1. Open a separate terminal (make sure you reconfigure your AWS credentials for that terminal). Forward traffic from your local machine to the Consul server running on EKS.

      kubectl port-forward services/consul-server 8501

   2. In the original shell, use curl or consul to list the services catalog

      curl -ks -H "x-consul-token: $CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN" https://localhost:8501/v1/catalog/services | jq .
      consul catalog services

9. You can do the same port forwarding magic for the Consul UI.

   1. Port-forward the Consul UI

      kubectl port-forward services/consul-ui 8501:443

   2. Use a web browser to view the Consul UI at https://localhost:8501

   3. Use the CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN to log in

      echo $CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN

Clean up

Uninstall Consul

consul-k8s uninstall -name consul -namespace default -wipe-data -auto-approve

Remove the EKS cluster

terraform destroy -var name=$USER