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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 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.

Create the IAM user:

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

Attach policies to give heptio-ark the necessary permissions:

BUCKET=<YOUR_BUCKET>
cat > heptio-ark-policy.json <<EOF
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
                "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
                "ec2:CreateTags",
                "ec2:CreateVolume",
                "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
                "ec2:DeleteSnapshot"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::${BUCKET}/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::${BUCKET}"
            ]
        }
    ]
}
EOF

aws iam put-user-policy \
  --user-name heptio-ark \
  --policy-name heptio-ark \
  --policy-document file://heptio-ark-policy.json

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>
      }
 }

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_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.
(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/aws/10-deployment.yaml

ALTERNATIVE: Setup permissions using kube2iam

Kube2iam is a Kubernetes application that allows managing AWS IAM permissions for pod via annotations rather than operating on API keys.

This path assumes you have kube2iam already running in your Kubernetes cluster. If that is not the case, please install it first, following the docs here: https://github.com/jtblin/kube2iam

It can be set up for Ark by creating a role that will have required permissions, and later by adding the permissions annotation on the ark deployment to define which role it should use internally.

Create a Trust Policy document to allow the role being used for EC2 management & assume kube2iam role:

cat > heptio-ark-trust-policy.json <<EOF
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::<AWS_ACCOUNT_ID>:role/<ROLE_CREATED_WHEN_INITIALIZING_KUBE2IAM>"
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
        }
    ]
}
EOF

Create the IAM role:

aws iam create-role --role-name heptio-ark --assume-role-policy-document file://./heptio-ark-trust-policy.json