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Enable or Disable Built-in NodePools - Amazon EKS
Built-in NodePool ReferenceProcedure

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Enable or Disable Built-in NodePools

EKS Auto Mode has two built-in NodePools. You can enable or disable these NodePools using the AWS console, CLI, or API.

Built-in NodePool Reference

  • system

    • This NodePool has a CriticalAddonsOnly taint. Many EKS add-ons, such as CoreDNS, tolerate this taint. Use this system node pool to separate cluster-critical applications.

    • Supports both amd64 and arm64 architectures.

  • general-purpose

    • This NodePool provides support for launching nodes for general purpose workloads in your cluster.

    • Uses only amd64 architecture.

Both built-in NodePools:

  • Use the default EKS NodeClass

  • Use only on-demand EC2 capacity

  • Use the C, M, and R EC2 instance families

  • Require generation 5 or newer EC2 instances

Note

Enabling at least one built-in NodePool is required for EKS to provision the "default" NodeClass. If you disable all built-in NodePools, you’ll need to create a custom NodeClass and configure a NodePool to use it. For more information about NodeClasses, see Create a Node Class for Amazon EKS.

Important

When you remove a built-in NodePool name from computeConfig.nodePools, the corresponding NodePool Kubernetes resource is deleted from the cluster. Any nodes managed by that NodePool are drained and terminated. When you add a built-in NodePool name back to computeConfig.nodePools, the corresponding NodePool resource is recreated on the cluster. This behavior is important when planning capacity changes, because Karpenter discovers NodePool resources through the Kubernetes API and stops scheduling nodes for deleted NodePools.

Procedure

Prerequisites

  • The latest version of the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) installed and configured on your device. To check your current version, use aws --version. To install the latest version, see Installing and Quick configuration with aws configure in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

    • Login to the CLI with sufficient IAM permissions to create AWS resources including IAM Policies, IAM Roles, and EKS Clusters.

Enable with AWS CLI

Use the following command to enable both built-in NodePools:

aws eks update-cluster-config \
  --name <cluster-name> \
  --compute-config '{
    "nodeRoleArn": "<node-role-arn>",
    "nodePools": ["general-purpose", "system"],
    "enabled": true
  }' \
  --kubernetes-network-config '{
  "elasticLoadBalancing":{"enabled": true}
  }' \
  --storage-config '{
  "blockStorage":{"enabled": true}
  }'

You can modify the command to selectively enable the NodePools.

Disable with AWS CLI

Use the following command to disable both built-in NodePools:

aws eks update-cluster-config \
  --name <cluster-name> \
  --compute-config '{
  "enabled": true,
  "nodePools": []
  }' \
  --kubernetes-network-config '{
  "elasticLoadBalancing":{"enabled": true}}' \
  --storage-config '{
  "blockStorage":{"enabled": true}
  }'