HA Kubernetes Clusters on AWS with Cluster API v1alpha2
About six months ago, I wrote a post on how to use Cluster API (specifically, the Cluster API Provider for AWS) to establish highly available Kubernetes clusters on AWS. That post was written with Cluster API (CAPI) v1alpha1 in mind. Although the concepts I presented there worked with v1alpha2 (released shortly after that post was written), I thought it might be helpful to revisit the topic with CAPI v1alpha2 specifically in mind. So, with that, here’s how to establish highly available Kubernetes clusters on AWS using CAPI v1alpha2.
By the way, it’s worth pointing out that CAPI is a fast-moving project, and release candidate versions of CAPI v1alpha3 are already available for some providers. Keep that in mind if you decide to start working with CAPI. I will write an updated version of this post for v1alpha3 once it has been out for a little while.
To be sure we’re all speaking the same language, here are some terms/acronyms that I’ll use in this post:
- CAPI = Cluster API (the provider-independent parts)
- CAPA = Cluster API Provider for AWS
- CABPK = Cluster API Bootstrap Provider for Kubeadm (new for v1alpha2)
- Management cluster = a Kubernetes cluster that has the Continue reading


