Install AWS App Mesh Controller For K8s

Please note that this workshop has been archived and is not actively maintained. On September 30, 2026, AWS will discontinue support for AWS App Mesh. For more information, visit this blog post.

AWS App Mesh Controller For K8s manages App Mesh resources within your Kubernetes clusters. The controller is accompanied by Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) that allow you to define App Mesh components such as Meshes and VirtualNodes using the Kubernetes API just as you define native Kubernetes objects such as Deployments and Services. These custom resources map to App Mesh API objects which the controller manages for you. The controller watches these custom resources for changes and reflects those changes into the App Mesh API.

The controller is installed via Helm Chart. Follow this link to install the latest version of Helm. Once done, you should see a version of 3.0 or higher.

helm version --short

Now, add the EKS Charts repo to Helm.

helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts

helm repo list | grep eks-charts

Create the appmesh-system namespace and attach IAM Policies for AWS App Mesh and AWS Cloud Map access.

If you are new to the IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) concept, Click here for me information.

kubectl create ns appmesh-system

# Create your OIDC identity provider for the cluster
eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider \
  --cluster appmesh-workshop \
  --approve

# Create an IAM role for the appmesh-controller service account
eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
  --cluster appmesh-workshop \
  --namespace appmesh-system \
  --name appmesh-controller \
  --attach-policy-arn  arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AWSCloudMapFullAccess,arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AWSAppMeshFullAccess \
  --override-existing-serviceaccounts \
  --approve

Now install App Mesh Controller into the appmesh-system namespace using the project’s Helm chart, specifying the service account you just created.

helm upgrade -i appmesh-controller eks/appmesh-controller \
  --namespace appmesh-system \
  --set region=${AWS_REGION} \
  --set serviceAccount.create=false \
  --set serviceAccount.name=appmesh-controller

To verify the installation was successful, list the objects in the appmesh-system namespace and ensure the appmesh-controller pod instance is in a Running state before moving on.

kubectl -n appmesh-system get all

You can also see that the App Mesh Custom Resource Definitions were installed.

kubectl get crds | grep appmesh