Create Node Pools

Create a new node pool in a managed cluster

Creating a node pool is useful when you need to run workloads that require machines with specific resources, such as a GPU, additional memory, or specialized network or storage hardware.

Prepare the environment

  1. Set the environment variable to the name you assigned this cluster.

    export CLUSTER_NAME=aws-example

    See Get Started with AWS for information on naming your cluster.

  2. If your workload cluster is self-managed, as described in Make the New Cluster Self-Managed, configure kubectl to use the kubeconfig for the cluster.

    export KUBECONFIG=${CLUSTER_NAME}.conf

  3. Define your node pool name.

    export NODEPOOL_NAME=example

Create an AWS node pool

Create a new AWS node pool with 3 replicas using this command:

dkp create nodepool aws ${NODEPOOL_NAME} \
    --cluster-name=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --replicas=3

machinedeployment.cluster.x-k8s.io/example created
⠈⠁ Creating default/example nodepool resources awsmachinetemplate.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io/example created
⠈⠑ Creating default/example nodepool resources kubeadmconfigtemplate.bootstrap.cluster.x-k8s.io/example created
 ✓ Creating default/example nodepool resources

This example uses default values for brevity. Use flags to define custom instance types, AMIs, and other properties.

Advanced users can use a combination of the --dry-run and --output=yaml flags to get a complete set of node pool objects to modify locally or store in version control.