This guide describes the steps to complete an example Astronomer Software install on Amazon Web Services (AWS), where you can deploy and scale Apache Airflow within an AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster. For full installations, Astronomer recommends platform administrators manually install Astronomer Software using the procedures described in Install Astronomer Software.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://astronomer-preview.mintlify.app/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Prerequisites
To install Astronomer on EKS, you’ll need access to the following tools and permissions:- The AWS CLI.
- A compatible version of Kubernetes and PostgreSQL as described in the Astronomer Version Compatibility Reference.
- The Kubernetes CLI (kubectl).
- The OpenSSL CLI
- Helm (minimum v3.6).
- An SMTP service and credentials. For example, Mailgun or Sendgrid.
- Permission to create and modify resources on AWS.
- Permission to generate a certificate (not self-signed) that covers a defined set of subdomains.
- PostgreSQL superuser permissions.
- An AWS Load Balancer Controller for the IP target type is required for all private Network Load Balancers (NLBs). See Installing the AWS Load Balancer Controller add-on.
- If you use Kubernetes version 1.23 or later, the Amazon EBS CSI driver.
- Optional.
eksctlfor creating and managing your Astronomer cluster on EKS.
Step 1: Choose a base domain
All Astronomer services will be tied to a base domain of your choice, under which you will need the ability to add and edit DNS records. Once created, your Astronomer base domain will be linked to a variety of sub-services that your users will access via the internet to manage, monitor and run Airflow on the platform. For the base domainastro.mydomain.com, for example, here are some corresponding URLs that your users would be able to reach:
- Software UI:
app.astro.mydomain.com - Airflow Deployments:
deployments.astro.mydomain.com/deployment-release-name/airflow - Grafana Dashboard:
grafana.astro.mydomain.com - Kibana Dashboard:
kibana.astro.mydomain.com
Step 2: Spin up the EKS control plane and a Kubernetes cluster
To proceed with the installation, you’ll need to spin up an EKS control plane as well as worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster by following this AWS guide. EKS is built off of Amazon’s pre-existing EC2 service, so you can manage your Kubernetes nodes the same way you would manage your EC2 nodes. As you follow the guide linked above, keep in mind:- Each version of Astronomer Software is compatible with only a particular set of Kubernetes versions. For more information, see the Astronomer Version Compatibility Reference.
- Astronomer recommends running the EKS control plane in a single security group. The worker nodes you spin up should have the same setup as the EKS control plane.
- All security and access settings needed for your worker nodes should be configured in your Cloud Formation template.
- Astronomer recommends configuring Autoscaling to automatically scale your resources up or down based on changing usage.
- If you create an EKS cluster from the UI,
kubectlaccess will be limited to the user who created the cluster by default.- To give more users
kubectlaccess, you’ll have to do so manually. - This post goes through how IAM plays with EKS.
- To give more users
- Expect to see each of your underlying nodes in the EC2 console.
- The default Astronomer resource requests are ~11 CPUs and ~40GiB of memory. Astronomer recommends using either six m5.xlarge or three m5.2xlarge instances for your cluster. To modify Astronomer default resource requests, see step 8.
If you work with multiple Kubernetes environments,
kubectxis an incredibly useful tool for quickly switching between Kubernetes clusters. Learn morehere.Step 3: Create a namespace
Create a namespace calledastronomer to host the core Astronomer platform:
Step 4: Configure TLS
Astronomer recommends running Astronomer Software on a dedicated domain (BASEDOMAIN) or subdomain (astro.BASEDOMAIN).
In order for users to access the web applications they need to manage Astronomer, you’ll need a TLS certificate that covers the following subdomains:
- Option 1: Obtain a TLS certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Astronomer recommends this option for smaller organizations where the DNS administrator and Kubernetes cluster administrator are the same person or on the same team.
- Option 2: Request a TLS certificate from your organization’s security team. Astronomer recommends this option for large organizations with their own protocols for generating TLS certificates.
- Option 3: Use the AWS Certificate Manager as the certificate provider.
Option 1: Create TLS certificates using Let’s Encrypt
Let’s Encrypt is a free and secure certificate authority (CA) service that provides TLS certificates that renew automatically every 90 days. Use this option if you are configuring Astronomer for a smaller organization without a dedicated security team. To set up TLS certificates this way, follow the guidelines in Automatically Renew TLS Certificates Using Let’s Encrypt. Make note of the certificate you create in this setup for Step 5.Option 2: Request a TLS certificate from your security team
If you’re installing Astronomer for a large organization, you’ll need to request a TLS certificate and private key from your enterprise security team. This certificate needs to be valid for theBASEDOMAIN your organization uses for Astronomer, as well as the subdomains listed at the beginning of Step 4. You should be given two .pem files:
- One for your encrypted certificate
- One for your private key
openssl CLI:
X509v3 Subject Alternative Name section of this report includes either a single *.BASEDOMAIN wildcard domain or the subdomains listed at the beginning of Step 4, then the certificate creation was successful.
Depending on your organization, you may receive either a globally trusted certificate or a certificate from a private CA. The certificate from your private CA may include a domain certificate, a root certificate, and/or intermediate certificates, all of which need to be in proper certificate order. To verify certificate order, follow the guidelines below.
Option 3: Use the AWS Certificate Manager as the certificate provider
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) terminates TLS at the Load Balancer level and does not encrypt the internal traffic inside the cluster. The ACM ingress controller requires a TLS secret with a certificate and private key to encrypt internal traffic. Because ACM relies on annotations attached to Kubernetes resources and does not issue certificates or private key files, you must complete one of the following options to create a secret:- Create a self-signed certificate. Self-signed certificates are ideal for privately hosted internal applications, as well as in development and testing environments. Avoid using self-signed certificates in installations where the trust and identity of the certificate issuer are important.
- Create a certificate with AWS Certificate Manager Private CA.
- Create a certificate with Let’s Encrypt.
<ACM-Certificate-ARN> field with the ARN of your ACM certificate.
Confirm certificate chain order
If your organization is using a private certificate authority, you’ll need to confirm that your certificate chain is ordered correctly. To determine your certificate chain order, run the following command using theopenssl CLI:
- Domain
- Intermediate (optional)
- Root
Step 5: Create a Kubernetes TLS Secret
If you received a globally trusted certificate or created a self-signed certificate, create a Kubernetes TLS secret using the following command and then proceed to Step 6. The following example includes a secret namedastronomer-tls, but you can custom define this name as needed:
astronomer-tls secret already exists in your Kubernetes cluster. Run the following command to confirm it exists:
-
Add the root certificate provided by your security team to an Opaque Kubernetes secret in the Astronomer namespace by running the following command:
The root certificate which you specify here should be the certificate of the authority that signed the Astronomer certificate, rather than the Astronomer certificate itself. This is the same certificate you need to install with all clients to get them to trust your services.The name of the secret file must be
cert.pemfor your certificate to be trusted properly. -
Note the value of
private-root-cafor when you configure your Helm chart in Step 8. You’ll need to additionally specify theprivateCaCertskey-value pair with this value for that step.
Step 6: Configure your SMTP URI
An SMTP service is required for sending and accepting email invites from Astronomer. If you’re running Astronomer Software withpublicSignups disabled (which is the default), you’ll need to configure SMTP as a way for your users to receive and accept invites to the platform via email. To integrate your SMTP service with Astronomer, fetch your SMTP service’s URI and store it in a Kubernetes secret:
| Provider | Example SMTP URL |
|---|---|
| AWS SES | smtp://AWS_SMTP_Username:AWS_SMTP_Password@email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?requireTLS=true |
| SendGrid | smtps://apikey:SG.sometoken@smtp.sendgrid.net:465/?pool=true |
| Mailgun | smtps://xyz%40example.com:password@smtp.mailgun.org/?pool=true |
| Office365 | smtp://xyz%40example.com:password@smtp.office365.com:587/?requireTLS=true |
| Custom SMTP-relay | smtp://smtp-relay.example.com:25/?ignoreTLS=true |
If there are
/or other escape characters in your username or password, you may need toURL encodethose characters.Step 7: Configure the database
By default, Astronomer requires a central Postgres database that will act as the backend for Astronomer’s Houston API and will host individual metadata databases for all Airflow Deployments spun up on the platform. While you’re free to configure any database, most AWS users on Astronomer run Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. For production environments, Astronomer recommends a managed Postgres solution.If you’re setting up a development environment, this step is optional. Astronomer can be configured to deploy the PostgreSQL helm chart as the backend database with the following set in your
values.yaml:astronomer-bootstrap that points to your database.
You must URL encode any special characters in your Postgres password.Astronomer recommends using a t2 medium as the minimum RDS instance size.
Step 8: Configure your Helm chart
As a next step, create a file named
values.yaml in an empty directory.
For context, this values.yaml file will assume a set of default values for our platform that specify everything from user role definitions to the Airflow images you want to support. As you grow with Astronomer and want to customize the platform to better suit your team and use case, your values.yaml file is the best place to do so.
Copy and paste the following example into the values.yaml file. Replace baseDomain, private-root-ca, /etc/containerd/certs.d, astronomer.houston.secret, and ssl.enabled with your own values. Additional example configurations are available in the Astronomer GitHub configs repository.
If you are installing Astronomer in an airgapped environment without access to the public internet, complete all of the setup inInstall in an Airgapped Environmentand then skip directly to Step 10 in this document.
Step 9: Install Astronomer
Now that you have an EKS cluster set up and yourvalues.yaml file defined, you’re ready to deploy all components of our platform.
First, run:
--version= flag and use the format 0.36.x. For example, to install Astronomer Software v0.36.0, you specify --version=0.36.0. For more information about the available patch versions, see the Software Release Notes.
When you’re defining <your-platform-release-name>, Astronomer recommends limiting the name to 12 characters to avoid operational issues.
After you run the previous commands, a set of Kubernetes pods are generated in your namespace. These pods power the individual services required to run the Astronomer platform, including the Software UI and Houston API.
Alternative ArgoCD installation
You can install Astronomer with ArgoCD, which is an open source continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, as an alternative to usinghelm install.
Because ArgoCD doesn’t support sync wave dependencies for app of apps structures, installing Astronomer requires some additional steps compared to the standard ArgoCD workflow:
-
Under the
globalsection of yourvalues.yamlfile, addenableArgoCDAnnotation: true. -
Create a new ArgoCD app. When creating the app, configure the following:
- Path: The filepath of your
values.yamlfile - Namespace: The namespace you want to use for Astronomer
- Cluster: The Kubernetes cluster in which you’re installing Astronomer
- Repository URL:
https://helm.astronomer.io
- Path: The filepath of your
- Sync the ArgoCD app with every component of the Astronomer platform selected. See Sync (Deploy) the Application.
-
Stop the sync when you see that
astronomer-houston-db-migrationshas completed in the Argo UI. -
Sync the application a second time, but this time clear
astronomer-alertmanagerin the Argo UI while keeping all other components selected. Wait for this sync to finish completely. - Sync the ArgoCD app a third time with all Astronomer platform components selected.
Step 10: Verify Pods are up
To verify all pods are up and running, run:Step 11: Configure DNS
Now that you’ve successfully installed Astronomer, a new load balancer will have spun up in your AWS account. This load balancer routes incoming traffic to our NGINX ingress controller. Run$ kubectl get svc -n astronomer to view your load balancer’s CNAME, located under the EXTERNAL-IP column for the astronomer-nginx service.
*.astro.mydomain.com, or alternatively create individual CNAME records for the following routes:
Step 12: Verify you can access the Software UI
Go toapp.BASEDOMAIN to see the Software UI.
Consider this your new Airflow control plane. From the Software UI, you’ll be able to both invite and manage users as well as create and monitor Airflow Deployments on the platform.
Step 13: Verify your TLS setup
To check if your TLS certificates were accepted, log in to the Software UI. Then, go toapp.BASEDOMAIN/token and run:
$ astro deploy on a test deployment. Create a deployment in the Software UI, then run:
ImagePullBackoff, check the pod description. If you see an x509 error, ensure that you have:
- Configured containerd’s
config_pathto point to/etc/containerd/certs.d. - Added the
privateCaCertsAddToHostkey-value pairs to your Helm chart.
values.yaml, contact Astronomer support for additional configuration assistance.
What’s next
To help you make the most of Astronomer Software, check out the following additional resources:- Renew TLS Certificates on Astronomer Software
- Integrating an Auth System
- Configuring Platform Resources
- Managing Users on Astronomer Software
Astronomer support team
If you have any feedback or need help during this process and aren’t in touch with our team already, a few resources to keep in mind:- Community Forum: Search previously asked questions about Airflow + Astronomer FAQs
- Astronomer Support Portal: Platform or Airflow issues