Managed Node Groups Basics

Create Node Group

eksctl create nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name standard-workers \
  --node-type t3.medium \
  --nodes 3 \
  --nodes-min 1 \
  --nodes-max 4 \
  --managed

Node Group with Custom Settings

eksctl create nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name custom-workers \
  --node-type t3.medium \
  --nodes 3 \
  --node-ami-family AmazonLinux2 \
  --override-instance-destroy-behavior terminate \
  --ebs-volume-size 50 \
  --ebs-volume-type gp3 \
  --asg-access \
  --external-dns-access \
  --full-ecr-access

Update Node Group

# Scale node group
eksctl scale nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name standard-workers \
  --nodes 5
 
# Update node group
eksctl update nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name standard-workers \
  --kubernetes-version 1.30
 
# Rotate node group (drains and replaces nodes)
eksctl rotate nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name standard-workers

Delete Node Group

eksctl delete nodegroup \
  --cluster my-cluster \
  --name standard-workers

Node Group Configuration Options

Instance Types

Family	Use Case
t3, m5, c5	General purpose
m5n, c5n	High network bandwidth
r5, r5n	Memory optimized
p3, p4, g4	GPU workloads
a1, m6g, c6g, r6g	ARM/Graviton

Launch Template Customization

apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
  region: us-west-2
managedNodeGroups:
  - name: custom-ng
    launchTemplate:
      id: lt-1234567890abcdef0
      version: "3"

References

• Creating a managed node group
• eksctl nodegroup documentation