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2. Install the tools

Your time: 10–15 min Do this: any time this week

Everything in the labs is kubectl, helm, terraform and the AWS CLI. The version floors matter: the cluster runs Kubernetes 1.36, and kubectl must be within one minor version of the server.

Tool Minimum Why
aws CLI 2.15 eks update-kubeconfig, Service Quotas, SSM parameter lookups
kubectl 1.35 version skew policy: ±1 minor of the 1.36 control plane
helm 3.14 GPU Operator install
terraform 1.5.7 the terraform-aws-modules/eks v21 module requires it
jq any parsing outputs in scripts
envsubst any substituting ${CLUSTER_NAME} into manifests (part of GNU gettext)
git, curl any

Optional but nice: watch (not on macOS by default — brew install watch), k9s for watching pods and nodes, and kubectx/kubens.

brew install awscli kubernetes-cli helm terraform jq gettext git watch
brew link --force gettext     # puts envsubst on your PATH

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y jq gettext-base git curl unzip
# AWS CLI v2
curl -sSL "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o awscliv2.zip && unzip -q awscliv2.zip && sudo ./aws/install
# kubectl (match the cluster's minor version)
curl -sSLO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/v1.36.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl" && sudo install -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
# helm
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash
# terraform — follow https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/install for your distro

Use the Linux instructions inside your WSL2 Ubuntu shell. Run everything from WSL, not PowerShell — the guide's commands assume a POSIX shell, and envsubst/make are expected to exist.

Configure AWS credentials

Whatever you normally use is fine — aws configure, SSO (aws sso login), or exported keys. The check is:

aws sts get-caller-identity

{
    "UserId": "AIDA...",
    "Account": "123456789012",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/ahmed"
}

Session tokens expire

If you use SSO or STS credentials with a short lifetime, make sure you can refresh them mid-session. A credential that expires 90 minutes into a 3.5-hour workshop will fail exactly when Karpenter is launching your node.

Verify

cd gpu-eks-workshop
make preflight

The Tools and AWS credentials sections should be all green. The Base stack section will warn that it isn't deployed yet — that's the next step.

Next: deploy the base stack →