Run Ark on AWS

To set up Ark on AWS, you:

• Create your S3 bucket
• Create an AWS IAM user for Ark
• Configure the server
• Create a Secret for your credentials

If you do not have the aws CLI locally installed, follow the [user guide][5] to set it up.

Create S3 bucket

Heptio Ark requires an object storage bucket to store backups in. Create an S3 bucket, replacing placeholders appropriately:

aws s3api create-bucket \
    --bucket <YOUR_BUCKET> \
    --region <YOUR_REGION> \
    --create-bucket-configuration LocationConstraint=<YOUR_REGION>

NOTE: us-east-1 does not support a LocationConstraint. If your region is us-east-1, omit the bucket configuration:

aws s3api create-bucket \
    --bucket <YOUR_BUCKET> \
    --region us-east-1

Create IAM user

For more information, see the AWS documentation on IAM users.

1. Create the IAM user:

   aws iam create-user --user-name heptio-ark
   

2. Attach policies to give heptio-ark the necessary permissions:

   aws iam attach-user-policy \
       --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonS3FullAccess \
       --user-name heptio-ark
   aws iam attach-user-policy \
       --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonEC2FullAccess \
       --user-name heptio-ark
   

3. Create an access key for the user:

   aws iam create-access-key --user-name heptio-ark
   

   The result should look like:

    {
       "AccessKey": {
             "UserName": "heptio-ark",
             "Status": "Active",
             "CreateDate": "2017-07-31T22:24:41.576Z",
             "SecretAccessKey": <AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>,
             "AccessKeyId": <AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
         }
    }
   

4. Create an Ark-specific credentials file (credentials-ark) in your local directory:

   [default]
   aws_access_key_id=<AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
   aws_secret_access_key=<AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>
   

   where the access key id and secret are the values returned from the create-access-key request.

Credentials and configuration

In the Ark root directory, run the following to first set up namespaces, RBAC, and other scaffolding. To run in a custom namespace, make sure that you have edited the YAML files to specify the namespace. See Run in custom namespace.

kubectl apply -f examples/common/00-prereqs.yaml

Create a Secret. In the directory of the credentials file you just created, run:

kubectl create secret generic cloud-credentials \
    --namespace <ARK_SERVER_NAMESPACE> \
    --from-file cloud=credentials-ark

Specify the following values in the example files:

• In examples/aws/00-ark-config.yaml:

  • Replace <YOUR_BUCKET> and <YOUR_REGION>. See the Config definition for details.

• In examples/common/10-deployment.yaml:

  • Make sure that spec.template.spec.containers[*].env.name is “AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE”.

• (Optional) If you run the nginx example, in file examples/nginx-app/with-pv.yaml:

  • Replace <YOUR_STORAGE_CLASS_NAME> with gp2. This is AWS’s default StorageClass name.

Start the server

In the root of your Ark directory, run:

kubectl apply -f examples/aws/00-ark-config.yaml
kubectl apply -f examples/common/10-deployment.yaml