Easily Deploy WordPress and MySQL on Amazon EKS

· 5 minute read

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that makes it easy to run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to install and operate your own Kubernetes control plane or nodes. By leveraging EKS, you benefit from the scalability, security, and reliability of AWS, while simplifying your Kubernetes management tasks. In this guide, we’ll walk through the steps to deploy a stateful WordPress site and its MySQL database on an EKS cluster, demonstrating the power and ease of using managed Kubernetes with AWS.

Pre-requisites

  • Ensure you have an AWS account set up with an IAM user or role: LINK
  • To access your AWS account via the Command Line Interface (CLI), make sure AWS CLI is installed on your machine. Follow the installation guide here: LINK
  • Configure environment variables for your IAM user to enable CLI access to your AWS account: LINK
  • Install the kubectl command-line tool to manage Kubernetes clusters: LINK or LINK
  • Install the eksctl CLI to manage EKS clusters: LINK
  • Ensure Helm is installed for Kubernetes package management: LINK or LINK

Step 1. Create an EKS cluster 🔗

Create your Kubernetes cluster on Amazon EKS through eksctl with the following commands:

eksctl create cluster \
--name eks-wp \
--region us-east-1 \
--zones us-east-1a,us-east-1b \
--managed

Once your cluster is deployed, you can check the connectivity with the command: kubectl cluster-info

To see the nodes: kubectl get nodes

To see the pods that are already running: kubectl get pods -A

To get detailed information on the instances on which the pods are running: kubectl get pods -o wide -A

Step 2. Create an IAM OIDC Provider for Your Cluster 🔗

First, create an IAM OIDC provider for your EKS cluster to enable the use of IAM roles for Kubernetes service accounts. This feature allows Kubernetes service accounts to assume IAM roles, enabling fine-grained permissions management for pods running in your cluster.

oidc_id=$(aws eks describe-cluster --name eks-wp --query "cluster.identity.oidc.issuer" --output text | cut -d '/' -f 5)
aws iam list-open-id-connect-providers | grep $oidc_id | cut -d "/" -f4
eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider --cluster eks-wp --approve

Step 3. Add IAM Role using eksctl 🔗

Create an IAM service account with the necessary policies attached.

eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
--name ebs-csi-controller-sa \
--namespace kube-system \
--cluster eks-wp \
--attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/service-role/AmazonEBSCSIDriverPolicy \
--approve \
--role-name AmazonEKS_EBS_CSI_DriverRole

This command is essential for setting up the necessary IAM infrastructure to allow the EBS CSI (Elastic Block Store Container Storage Interface) driver to manage EBS volumes within your Kubernetes cluster on AWS EKS. The IAM role (AmazonEKS_EBS_CSI_DriverRole) created here will have the permissions defined by the attached policy (AmazonEBSCSIDriverPolicy), enabling the CSI driver to perform actions like attaching, detaching, and managing EBS volumes as persistent storage for your Kubernetes workloads.

Step 4. Install the EBS CSI Driver 🔗

Add the EBS CSI driver to your EKS cluster using the created IAM role.

# Get the ARN of the IAM role
role_arn=$(aws iam list-roles --query "Roles[?RoleName=='AmazonEKS_EBS_CSI_DriverRole'].Arn" --output text)

# Install the EBS CSI driver
eksctl create addon --name aws-ebs-csi-driver --cluster eks-wp --service-account-role-arn $role_arn --force

Step 5. Deploy the Amazon EBS CSI Driver to your Amazon EKS cluster 🔗

Add and install the EBS CSI driver using Helm.

helm repo add aws-ebs-csi-driver https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/aws-ebs-csi-driver
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install aws-ebs-csi-driver \
    --namespace kube-system \
    aws-ebs-csi-driver/aws-ebs-csi-driver

Once the driver has been deployed, verify the pods are running:

kubectl get pods -n kube-system -l app.kubernetes.io/name=aws-ebs-csi-driver

Step 6. Deploy MySQL and WordPress 🔗

Now, you can create the necessary Kubernetes resources for MySQL and WordPress in the cluster. For that, you need to create two files. These files contain information about the different settings to be applied to our MySQL and WordPress pods, as well as services and persistent volume claims.

Download the following configuration files:

  • MySQL configuration file: run the command

curl -LO https://k8s.io/examples/application/wordpress/mysql-deployment.yaml

This manifest describes a single-instance MySQL Deployment. The MySQL container mounts the PersistentVolume at /var/lib/mysql. The MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD environment variable sets the database password from the Secret.

  • WordPress file: run the command

curl -LO https://k8s.io/examples/application/wordpress/wordpress-deployment.yaml

This manifest describes a single-instance WordPress Deployment. The WordPress container mounts the PersistentVolume at /var/www/html for website data files. The WORDPRESS_DB_HOST environment variable sets the name of the MySQL Service defined above, and WordPress will access the database by Service. The WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD environment variable sets the database password from the Secret kustomize generated.

Step 7. Create a kustomization.yaml 🔗

In this file, we’ll specify the order of execution of the files downloaded above, along with the secret key.

A Secret is an object that stores a piece of sensitive data like a password or key. Since 1.14, kubectl supports the management of Kubernetes objects using a kustomization file. You can create a Secret by generators in kustomization.yaml.

Add a Secret generator in kustomization.yaml with the following command (you will need to replace YOUR_PASSWORD with the password you want to use)

cat <<EOF >kustomization.yaml
apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization 
secretGenerator:
- name: mysql-pass
  literals:
  - password=YOUR_PASSWORD
resources:
  - mysql-deployment.yaml
  - wordpress-deployment.yaml
EOF

Step 8. Deploy containers 🔗

Now deploy both containers to EKS with the following command:

kubectl apply -k .

You can verify that all objects exist:

  • Pods: kubectl get pods
  • Secrets: kubectl get secrets
  • Persistent Volume Claims: kubectl get pvc
  • Services: kubectl get services

Once the containers have successfully been created and the Pods show as  “Running” in Kubernetes, you can get the DNS name of the ELB LoadBalancer by typing the following command:

kubectl get svc wordpress

Paste it on the web browser.

Voilá

Congratulations! You’ve now deployed your stateful WordPress site to AWS on EKS!

If you’re feeling brave, head to my next tutorial to learn how to install Veeam Kasten on this EKS cluster!

Clean up your environment 🔗

To clean up your environment, follow these steps:

  1. Delete the Kubernetes resources:

kubectl delete -k .

  1. Use eksctl to delete your EKS cluster and all of its dependencies via CloudFormation:

eksctl delete cluster eks-wp

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