Skip to main content

Install Mission Control Agent on an AWS EKS cluster

Prerequisites

To install and run Mission Control you need to have the following prerequisites:

  • EKS 1.28+ with an Ingress Controller
  • 500-1000m of CPU and 4GB of Memory
  • Persistent Volumes with 20GB+ of storage or an external postgres database like RDS

Create an IAM Role​

Depending on how you want to use Mission Control you need to create an IAM role for mission control to use:

Use CaseRole
Read Only Scrapingarn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess
Playbooks to create and update AWS Resourcesarn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess
Secret Management (optional)Custom KMS policy (see below)
Create new IAM Policy (Alternative)

You can also create a new policy with only the permissions required by Mission Control

iam-policy.json
{
	"Version": "2012-10-17",
	"Statement": [
		{
			"Sid": "mission-control-config-role",
			"Effect": "Allow",
			"Action": [
				"acm:Describe*",
				"acm:Get*",
				"acm:List*",
				"cloudtrail:LookupEvents",
				"config:BatchGetAggregateResourceConfig",
				"config:BatchGetResourceConfig",
				"config:Describe*",
				"config:Get*",
				"config:List*",
				"config:SelectAggregateResourceConfig",
				"config:SelectResourceConfig",
				"ec2:Describe*",
				"ecr:Describe*",
				"eks:Describe*",
				"eks:ListClusters",
				"elasticfilesystem:Describe*",
				"elasticloadbalancing:Describe*",
				"guardduty:Describe*",
				"guardduty:Get*",
				"guardduty:List*",
				"iam:GetAccountName",
				"iam:GetAccountSummary",
				"iam:GetGroup",
				"iam:GetGroupPolicy",
				"iam:GetInstanceProfile",
				"iam:GetLoginProfile",
				"iam:GetPolicy",
				"iam:GetRole",
				"iam:GetRolePolicy",
				"iam:GetUser",
				"iam:List*",
				"lambda:List*",
				"rds:Describe*",
				"sts:GetCallerIdentity"
				"trustedadvisor:Describe*",
				"trustedadvisor:DownloadRisk",
				"trustedadvisor:Get*",
				"trustedadvisor:List*",
			],
			"Resource": "*"
		}
	]
}

Configure IAM Roles for Mission Control​

  1. Ensure the AWS Pod Identity Agent is configured and running

  2. Create a mapping file for eksctl

    eksctl.yaml
    podIdentityAssociations:
    - namespace: mission-control
    	serviceAccountName:  mission-control-sa
    	permissionPolicyARNs: 
    		# Add additional policies as needed:
    		# - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess
    		# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    		- arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess

    - namespace: mission-control
    	serviceAccountName:  config-db-sa
    	permissionPolicyARNs: 
    		# Add additional policies as needed:
    		# - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess
    		# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    		- arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess

    - namespace: mission-control
    	serviceAccountName:  canary-checker-sa
    	permissionPolicyARNs: 
    		# Add additional policies as needed:
    		# - arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess
    		# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    		- arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess
    iam:
    # note withOIDC is not required for Pod Identity
    serviceAccounts:
    # used by mission control for notifications / playbooks
    - metadata:
    		name: mission-control-sa
    		namespace: mission-control
    	attachPolicyARNs:
    	# Add additional policies as needed:
    	# - "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess"
    	# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    	- "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess"
    # used for cloudwatch, S3 and other AWS health checks
    - metadata:
    		name: canary-checker-sa
    		namespace: mission-control
    	attachPolicyARNs:
    	# Add additional policies as needed:
    	# - "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess"
    	# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    	- "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess"
    # used to scrape resources, AWS CloudTrail and AWS Cost & Usage Reports
    - metadata:
    		name: config-db-sa
    		namespace: mission-control
    	attachPolicyARNs:
    	# Add additional policies as needed:
    	# - "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess"
    	# - Custom KMS policy ARN for secret management
    	- "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess"

    Using an existing IAM Role

    If you are using a pre-existing IAM role when creating a pod identity association, you must configure the role to trust the newly introduced EKS service principal (pods.eks.amazonaws.com)

    iam-trust-policy.json
    {
    	"Version": "2012-10-17",
    	"Statement": [
    		{
    			"Effect": "Allow",
    			"Principal": {
    				"Service": "pods.eks.amazonaws.com"
    			},
    			"Action": ["sts:AssumeRole", "sts:TagSession"]
    		}
    	]
    }

  3. Apply the Pod Identities using eksctl

    eksctl create podidentityassociation  -c eksctl.yaml

  4. Choose a routable DOMAIN for Mission Control

    See Ingress for more options on configuring the ingress including generating certs with cert-manager

    See Local Testing for testing using a kind or minikube without a routable domain

  5. Install Mission Control

    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Namespace
    metadata:
      name: mission-control
    ---
    apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
    kind: HelmRepository
    metadata:
      name: flanksource
      namespace: mission-control
    spec:
      interval: 5m0s
      url: https://flanksource.github.io/charts
    ---
    apiVersion:  helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
    kind: HelmRelease
    metadata:
      name: mission-control-agent
      namespace: mission-control
    spec:
      chart:
        spec:
          chart: mission-control-agent
          sourceRef:
            kind: HelmRepository
            name: flanksource
            namespace: mission-control
      interval: 5m
    values:
      upstream.agent: YOUR_LOCAL_NAME
      upstream.username: token
      upstream.password: 
      upstream.host:
    See values.yaml

Optional: KMS Setup for Secret Management​

If you plan to use secret parameters in playbooks, create a KMS key and IAM policy to encrypt and manage sensitive data:

Create a KMS Key​

# Set your AWS region and account ID
export AWS_REGION=us-west-2
export ACCOUNT_ID=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text)

# Create a KMS key for Mission Control
aws kms create-key \
    --description "Mission Control Secret Management Key" \
    --region $AWS_REGION \
    --query 'KeyMetadata.KeyId' \
    --output text > mission-control-key-id.txt

export KEY_ID=$(cat mission-control-key-id.txt)

# Create an alias for easier reference
aws kms create-alias \
    --alias-name alias/mission-control-secrets \
    --target-key-id $KEY_ID \
    --region $AWS_REGION

Create KMS IAM Policy​

# Create a custom KMS policy
cat > mission-control-kms-policy.json << EOF
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "MissionControlKMSAccess",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "kms:Encrypt",
                "kms:Decrypt",
                "kms:ReEncrypt*",
                "kms:GenerateDataKey*",
                "kms:DescribeKey"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:kms:${AWS_REGION}:${ACCOUNT_ID}:key/${KEY_ID}"
        }
    ]
}
EOF

# Create the IAM policy
aws iam create-policy \
    --policy-name MissionControlKMSPolicy \
    --policy-document file://mission-control-kms-policy.json \
    --query 'Policy.Arn' \
    --output text > mission-control-kms-policy-arn.txt

export KMS_POLICY_ARN=$(cat mission-control-kms-policy-arn.txt)

After creating the key and policy, make sure to include the KMS policy ARN in your service account configurations above.

Create a Mission Control Connection​

awskms.yaml
---
# yaml-language-server: $schema=../../config/schemas/connection.schema.json
apiVersion: mission-control.flanksource.com/v1
kind: Connection
metadata:
  name: flanksource-awskms
spec:
  awskms:
    keyID: arn:aws:kms:eu-west-1:123123123123:alias/sops-key
    region: eu-west-1
    accessKey:
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: aws-flanksource
          key: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
    secretKey:
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: aws-flanksource
          key: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Update Mission Control Helm Values​

Set kmsConnection to the KMS connection reference used by your installation:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: mission-control
---
apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: flanksource
  namespace: mission-control
spec:
  interval: 5m0s
  url: https://flanksource.github.io/charts
---
apiVersion:  helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: mission-control-agent
  namespace: mission-control
spec:
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: mission-control-agent
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository
        name: flanksource
        namespace: mission-control
  interval: 5m
values:
  upstream.agent: YOUR_LOCAL_NAME
  upstream.username: token
  upstream.password: 
  upstream.host:   
  kmsConnection: "connection://<namespace>/<kms-connection-name>"
See values.yaml

Next Steps​

Scrape AWS Resources
Integration
Scraper
CRD