Set up Palette with AWS

In this guide, you will learn how to set up Palette for use with your AWS cloud account. These steps are required in order to authenticate Palette and allow it to deploy host clusters. The concepts you learn about in the Getting Started section are centered around a fictional case study company, Spacetastic Ltd.

🧑‍🚀 Back at Spacetastic HQ

The Spacetastic team decide to look for an external solution that can help them scale and manage their Kubernetes services. Partnering with a team of Kubernetes experts allows them to focus on expanding their astronomy education platform, instead of spending countless hours migrating and rehosting their services. They identify the following list of benefits that their new platform should provide.

• Simplified Kubernetes cluster deployment processes across cloud providers.
• Cluster maintenance and security patching across environments.
• Monitoring and observability of Kubernetes workloads.

"I have so many ideas for new features for our backlog." says Anya, Lead Astrophycist. "Our community of space explorers want to keep learning, so we shouldn't slow down our implementation cycle. We need to keep expanding our astronomy education product."

Kai nods knowingly. As a Platform Engineer, they agree with Anya's concerns. "I've done some research on Kubernetes orchestration solutions. It seems that Palette has all the capabilities we need to help us grow."

"I agree with both of you, but I want to review the developer experience in detail before we agree to implement a new solution in production." says Wren, whose main concern as Founding Engineer is to ensure development velocity does not decrease. "Let's reach out to Spectro Cloud to create an account. Then, we can make an informed decision after we complete their Getting Started tutorials."

Prerequisites

• A Palette account with tenant admin access.

• Sign up to a public cloud account from AWS. The AWS cloud account must have the required IAM policies.

• An SSH key pair available in the region where you want to deploy the cluster. Check out the Create EC2 SSH Key Pair for guidance.

Enablement

Palette needs access to your AWS cloud account in order to create and manage AWS clusters and resources.

Static Credentials Access

1. Create an IAM Role or IAM User for Palette. Use the following resources if you need additional help.

   • IAM Role creation guide.
   • IAM User creation guide.

2. In the AWS console, assign the Palette-required IAM policies to the IAM role or the IAM user that Palette will use.

3. Log in to Palette as tenant admin.

4. From the left Main Menu, click on Tenant Settings.

5. Select Cloud Accounts, and click +Add AWS Account.

6. In the cloud account creation wizard provide the following information:

   • Account Name: Custom name for the cloud account.

   • Description: Optional description for the cloud account.

   • Partition: Choose AWS from the drop-down Menu.

   • Credentials:

     • AWS Access key
     • AWS Secret access key

7. Click the Validate button to validate the credentials.

8. Once the credentials are validated, the Add IAM Policies toggle displays. Toggle Add IAM Policies on.

9. Use the drop-down Menu, which lists available IAM policies in your AWS account, to select any desired IAM policies you want to assign to Palette IAM role or IAM user.

Create a Palette API Key

Follow the steps below to create a Palette API key. This is required for the Cluster Management with Terraform tutorial.

1. Log in to Palette as a tenant admin.

2. Switch to the Tenant Admin scope

3. Navigate to the left Main Menu and select Tenant Settings.

4. From the Tenant Settings Menu, select API Keys.

5. Click on Add New API key.

6. Fill out the following input fields:

Input Field	Description
API Key Name	Assign a name to the API key.
Description	Provide a description for the API key.
User Name	Select the user to assign the API key.
Expiration Date	Select an expiration date from the available options. You can also specify a custom date by selecting Custom.

5. Click the Generate button.

6. Copy the API key and save it in a secure location, such as a password manager. Share the API key with the user you created the API key for.

warning

Ensure you save the API key in a secure location. You will not be able to view the API key again.

Validate

You can verify your account is added.

1. Log in to Palette.

2. From the left Main Menu, select Tenant Settings.

3. Next, on the Tenant Settings Menu, select Cloud Accounts.

4. The added cloud account is listed under AWS with all other available AWS cloud accounts.

Next Steps

Now that you set up Palette for use with AWS, you can start deploying Kubernetes clusters to your AWS account. To learn how to get started with deploying Kubernetes clusters to AWS, we recommend that you continue to the Create a Cluster Profile tutorial to create a full cluster profile for your host cluster.

🧑‍🚀 Catch up with Spacetastic

After following the detailed Palette setup instructions, the Spacetastic team have added their cloud accounts on the Palette dashboard. They are ready to learn about Palette.

"The Spectro Cloud team has provided our Palette accounts" says Kai. "I have followed their setup guide and have added our cloud accounts. I can already tell at a first glance that they offer many Kubernetes customization features."

Wren joins Kai in looking at the Palette dashboard. "I'm interested to learn more, but I never believe in magic solutions. We should review their Getting Started material in detail to ensure that Palette is a good fit for us."