Import OVAs

Importing EKS Anywhere OVAs to vSphere

If you want to specify an OVA template, you will need to import OVA files into vSphere before you can use it in your EKS Anywhere cluster. This guide was written using VMware Cloud on AWS, but the VMware OVA import guide can be found here.

Note

If you don’t specify a template in the cluster spec file, EKS Anywhere will use the proper default one for the Kubernetes minor version and OS family you specified in the spec file. If the template doesn’t exist, it will import the appropriate OVA into vSphere and add the necessary tags.

The default OVA for a Kubernetes minor version + OS family will change over time, for example, when a new EKS Distro version is released. In that case, new clusters will use the new OVA (EKS Anywhere will import it automatically).

Warning

Do not power on the imported OVA directly as it can cause some undesired configurations on the OS template and affect cluster creation. If you want to explore or modify the OS, please follow the instructions to customize the OVA.

EKS Anywhere supports the following operating system families

Bottlerocket (default)
Ubuntu
RHEL

A list of OVAs for this release can be found on the artifacts page.

Using vCenter Web User Interface

Right click on your Datacenter, select Deploy OVF Template
Select an OVF template using URL or selecting a local OVF file and click on Next. If you are not able to select an OVF template using URL, download the file and use Local file option.

Note: If you are using Bottlerocket OVAs, please select local file option.
Select a folder where you want to deploy your OVF package (most of our OVF templates are under SDDC-Datacenter directory) and click on Next. You cannot have an OVF template with the same name in one directory. For workload VM templates, leave the Kubernetes version in the template name for reference. A workload VM template will support at least one prior Kubernetes major versions.
Select any compute resource to run (from cluster-1, 10.2.34.5, etc..) the deployed VM and click on Next
Review the details and click Next.
Accept the agreement and click Next.
Select the appropriate storage (e.g. “WorkloadDatastore“) and click Next.
Select destination network (e.g. “sddc-cgw-network-1”) and click Next.
Finish.
Snapshot the VM. Right click on the imported VM and select Snapshots -> Take Snapshot… (It is highly recommended that you snapshot the VM. This will reduce the time it takes to provision machines and cluster creation will be faster. If you prefer not to take snapshot, skip to step 13)
Name your template (e.g. “root”) and click Create.
Snapshots for the imported VM should now show up under the Snapshots tab for the VM.
Right click on the imported VM and select Template and Convert to Template

Steps to deploy a template using GOVC (CLI)

To deploy a template using govc, you must first ensure that you have GOVC installed . You need to set and export three environment variables to run govc GOVC_USERNAME, GOVC_PASSWORD and GOVC_URL.

Import the template to a content library in vCenter using URL or selecting a local OVA file

Using URL:

govc library.import -k -pull <library name> <URL for the OVA file>

Using a file from the local machine:

govc library.import <library name> <path to OVA file on local machine>

Deploy the template

govc library.deploy -pool <resource pool> -folder <folder location to deploy template> /<library name>/<template name> <name of new VM>

2a. If using Bottlerocket template for newer Kubernetes version than 1.21, resize disk 1 to 22G

govc vm.disk.change -vm <template name> -disk.label "Hard disk 1" -size 22G

2b. If using Bottlerocket template for Kubernetes version 1.21, resize disk 2 to 20G

govc vm.disk.change -vm <template name> -disk.label "Hard disk 2" -size 20G

Take a snapshot of the VM (It is highly recommended that you snapshot the VM. This will reduce the time it takes to provision machines and cluster creation will be faster. If you prefer not to take snapshot, skip this step)
```
govc snapshot.create -vm ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.25.6 root
```

Mark the new VM as a template

govc vm.markastemplate <name of new VM>

Important Additional Steps to Tag the OVA

Using vCenter UI

Tag to indicate OS family

Select the template that was newly created in the steps above and navigate to Summary -> Tags.
Click Assign -> Add Tag to create a new tag and attach it
Name the tag os:ubuntu or os:bottlerocket

Tag to indicate eksd release

Select the template that was newly created in the steps above and navigate to Summary -> Tags.
Click Assign -> Add Tag to create a new tag and attach it
Name the tag eksdRelease:{eksd release for the selected ova}, for example eksdRelease:kubernetes-1-25-eks-5 for the 1.25 ova. You can find the rest of eksd releases in the previous section . If it’s the first time you add an eksdRelease tag, you would need to create the category first. Click on “Create New Category” and name it eksdRelease.

Using govc

Tag to indicate OS family

Create tag category

govc tags.category.create -t VirtualMachine os

Create tags os:ubuntu and os:bottlerocket

govc tags.create -c os os:bottlerocket
govc tags.create -c os os:ubuntu

Attach newly created tag to the template

govc tags.attach os:bottlerocket <Template Path>
govc tags.attach os:ubuntu <Template Path>

Verify tag is attached to the template

govc tags.ls <Template Path>

Tag to indicate eksd release

Create tag category

govc tags.category.create -t VirtualMachine eksdRelease

Create the proper eksd release Tag, depending on your template. You can find the eksd releases in the previous section . For example eksdRelease:kubernetes-1-25-eks-5 for the 1.25 template.

govc tags.create -c eksdRelease eksdRelease:kubernetes-1-25-eks-5

Attach newly created tag to the template

govc tags.attach eksdRelease:kubernetes-1-25-eks-5 <Template Path>

Verify tag is attached to the template

govc tags.ls <Template Path>

Note

If the tags above are not applied as shown exactly, eks-a template validations will fail and CLI will abort

After you are done you can use the template for your workload cluster.