This section describes the prerequisites for using the Managed Kubernetes Service on the ECMWF side of the European Weather Cloud (EWC) and explains how to get started.
Request access
This service is currently in a pilot phase and forms part of the validation programme for the Managed Kubernetes Service at ECMWF.
If you need access, please open a ticket through the EWC Support Portal
Pre-requisites
Before using the service, the following conditions must be met:
Request access to the ECMWF OpenStack API and obtain the required OpenStack application credentials.
Request access to the Kubernetes service via the EWC Support Portal (this ensures the necessary permissions are granted).
Ensure your OpenStack project has sufficient quota to create the cluster (control plane and worker nodes).
Access via OpenStack command-line client
Once the prerequisites are satisfied, you can interact with the service using the OpenStack command-line client.
Setup steps
If not already installed, install the OpenStack command-line client.
Install the Magnum plugin using pip:
pip install python-magnumclient
Configure your environment so it can authenticate against OpenStack using your application credentials (either by sourcing openrc.sh or by using a clouds.yaml file).
Ensure you have an SSH keypair registered in your OpenStack project
Test your setup
Run the following command to verify that the client and Magnum plugin are working correctly:
openstack coe cluster --help
If the command returns without errors, you can proceed with creating and managing clusters as described in the cluster provisioning and management sections of this documentation.
Access via Terraform/OpenTofu
The Kubernetes service can also be used through Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or OpenTofu.
These tools interact with OpenStack API services—including Magnum—via the terraform-provider-openstack plugin.
To get started with IaC-based access, refer to the EWC documentation page on “IaC via Terraform and OpenTofu”.