Streamline Your Kubernetes Workflow: EKS Clusters and ALB Made Easy

When it comes to managing Kubernetes on AWS, Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is the go-to choice. But let’s be honest — creating an EKS cluster using the AWS Console is a painfully slow and click-heavy experience. Tons of screens, configuration wizards, and waiting.

That’s why most engineers and organizations turn to a much simpler CLI tool: eksctl.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to:

• Create an EKS cluster using eksctl

• Deploy a sample app

• Set up an AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) Controller to make the app accessible

Let’s dive in:

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Step 1: Create Your EKS Cluster (the Easy Way)

First things first: install eksctl. It’s a CLI tool built specifically for EKS by Weaveworks and AWS.

Once you have it installed, run this command to create a cluster using Fargate (no EC2 node groups needed!):

eksctl create cluster --name demo-cluster --region us-east-1 --fargate

Heads up: This command can take several minutes as AWS spins up the cluster and associated resources.

Once it’s ready, you can verify your new cluster in the EKS dashboard under the AWS Console.

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Step 2: Download the kubeconfig to Use kubectl

To interact with your new EKS cluster using kubectl, you’ll need to update your kubeconfig:

aws eks update-kubeconfig --name demo-cluster --region us-east-1

Now you're ready to run Kubernetes commands locally against your EKS cluster.

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Step 3: Create a Fargate Profile for Your App

By default, workloads only run in the default namespace. But it's a good idea to keep apps isolated in their own namespaces.

Let’s create a Fargate profile so our sample app can run in a game-2048 (my app name) namespace:

eksctl create fargateprofile \
  --cluster demo-cluster \
  --region us-east-1 \
  --name alb-sample-app \
  --namespace game-2048

You can verify this Fargate profile under the Compute tab in the EKS Console.

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Step 4: Deploy a Sample App

Let’s deploy the 2048-game using Kubernetes manifests.

Run:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.5.4/docs/examples/2048/2048_full.yaml

This deploys:

• A deployment

• A service

• An ingress resource

But hold on! Although the app is running, you won’t be able to access it just yet. Why?

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Why You Can’t Access the App (Yet)

Your ingress resource is in place, but it needs an Ingress Controller to actually create and manage an ALB (Application Load Balancer) in AWS.

So next, we’ll set up the AWS Load Balancer Controller in our cluster.

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Step 5: Set Up IAM for the ALB Controller

The ALB Controller needs permission to talk to AWS APIs. We'll give it access using IAM roles and policies.

Associate the OIDC Provider

First, associate an IAM OIDC provider with your cluster (if not already done):

eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider --cluster demo-cluster --approve

Download the IAM Policy JSON

Here, I am using an IAM policy JSON that was already created according to the documentation:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.11.0/docs/install/iam_policy.json

Create an IAM Policy

aws iam create-policy \
  --policy-name AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
  --policy-document file://iam_policy.json

Create an IAM Role for the Controller

eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
  --cluster=demo-cluster \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --name=aws-load-balancer-controller \
  --role-name AmazonEKSLoadBalancerControllerRole \
  --attach-policy-arn=arn:aws:iam::<your-aws-account-id>:policy/AWSLoadBalancerControllerIAMPolicy \
  --approve

Replace <your-aws-account-id> with your actual account ID.

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Step 6: Install the ALB Controller via Helm

Make sure you have Helm installed. Then:

Add the EKS Helm repo

helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

Update your Helm repos

helm repo update eks

Install the ALB Controller

helm install aws-load-balancer-controller eks/aws-load-balancer-controller \
  -n kube-system \
  --set clusterName=demo-cluster \
  --set serviceAccount.create=false \
  --set serviceAccount.name=aws-load-balancer-controller \
  --set region=us-east-1 \
  --set vpcId=<your-vpc-id>

Tip: You can get the VPC ID from your EKS cluster’s Networking tab in the AWS Console.

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Step 7: Verify It’s Working

Run:

kubectl get deployment -n kube-system aws-load-balancer-controller

You should see the controller running successfully in the kube-system namespace.

Now head to your Ingress resource in the EKS Console. You’ll notice that the controller created an AWS ALB and associated it with your app.

Try opening the URL for the ALB — your app should now be publicly accessible!

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Wrapping Up

We just:

• Created an EKS cluster using eksctl

• Deployed a sample app to a separate namespace using Fargate

• Set up the AWS ALB Ingress Controller to expose it to the world

This is the kind of setup that modern cloud-native apps require. And now that you’ve done it once, you can automate even further, integrate it into CI/CD pipelines, and scale up your apps securely and efficiently.