Setting up WordPress on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using the Kubernetes package manager, Helm, is a straightforward process. This guide will walk you through the steps to launch a highly available, scalable WordPress installation in minutes.

Create EKS Cluster

Create an Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster. This can be done via the “eksctl” command line tool.

curl --silent --location "https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$(uname -s)_amd64.tar.gz" | tar xz -C /tmp
sudo mv /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin

eksctl create cluster 

Install Helm

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes, and it is used to deploy and manage applications on a Kubernetes cluster. You can install Helm by following the official Helm installation guide.

sudo yum install openssl -y
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 > get_helm.sh
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

Set Up EBS CSI addon for EKS

First, create an IAM OIDC provider for your cluster.

oidc_id=$(aws eks describe-cluster --name my-cluster --query "cluster.identity.oidc.issuer" --output text | cut -d '/' -f 5)
aws iam list-open-id-connect-providers | grep $oidc_id | cut -d "/" -f4
eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider --cluster my-cluster --approve

Add IAM Role using eksctl

eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
--name ebs-csi-controller-sa \
--namespace kube-system \
--cluster my-cluster \
--attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/service-role/AmazonEBSCSIDriverPolicy \
--approve \
--role-only \
--role-name AmazonEKS_EBS_CSI_DriverRole

Then add EBS CSI to EKS by running the following command

eksctl create addon --name aws-ebs-csi-driver --cluster my-cluster --service-account-role-arn arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/AmazonEKS_EBS_CSI_DriverRole --force

Install WordPress using Helm

Install the WordPress chart: To install the WordPress chart, run the following command:

helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

Once the chart is added then install WordPress using the below command.

helm install my-release --set wordpressUsername=admin   --set wordpressPassword=defaultpass bitnami/wordpress

This will install the latest version of the WordPress chart from the official Bitnami repository. A default user is created with the username “admin” and the password is set to “defaultpass”.

Access the WordPress site

After the installation is complete, you can access the WordPress site using the URL provided by the output of the install command. Alternatively, you can go to EC2->Load Balancer and grab the Load balancer URL from there.

Conclusion

With these steps, you have successfully deployed a highly available and scalable WordPress installation on AWS using Helm. This setup can be easily managed, scaled, and maintained, making it an ideal choice for hosting a WordPress site.