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Edka Kubernetes Management Platform Edka Kubernetes Management Platform

Create Your First Cluster

This guide will help you set up your first Edka Kubernetes cluster.

Prerequisites

  • A Hetzner Cloud account. If you don’t have one, see our Prerequisites page for detailed instructions.
  • A Hetzner Cloud API token with read/write permissions. Check our Prerequisites page for detailed instructions.

Optional:

  • Kubectl (Kubernetes CLI - only necessary for advanced operations)
  • Lens - a Kubernetes IDE (recommended for managing advanced operations with your cluster visually)

If you don’t have these yet, see our Prerequisites page for detailed instructions.

Note: Kubernetes knowledge is not required to use Edka, but it can be helpful for advanced operations.

Step 1: Create an Edka Account

  1. Go to console.edka.io and click Create Account
  2. Sign up using your email or Google account
  3. Verify your email address

Step 2: Prepare Your Hetzner Token

  1. Generate a Hetzner API token with read/write permissions (see prerequisites)
  2. Decide how you want to use it:
    • Store a token on the cluster (recommended)
    • Use a temporary token during creation (not stored)
    • Use the account-level integration (legacy) useful for quickly creating a cluster without always having to provide a token.

Edka uses a unique token per cluster (recommended). You can add or update the token later in Clusters > your cluster > Settings > Access & Security.

Note: The account-level integration in Settings > Integrations > Hetzner (Legacy) is reccomended for testing and development purposes.

Step 3: Create Your First Cluster

  1. In the Edka dashboard, navigate to Clusters
  2. Choose a name for your cluster (e.g., “clusterone”)
  3. Click Create Cluster

Provision Cluster

Optional settings:

  • Cluster location (e.g. Nuremberg)
  • Kubernetes version (e.g., 1.32.1-k3s1)
  • Instance type for control plane and node pools (e.g., CX21)
  • Set a highly available control plane (recommended for production)
  • Customize the network settings in the Network tab
  • Choose the number of instances and node pools in the Node Pools tab
  • Provide a cluster token (stored per cluster) or use a temporary token (not stored)

Edka will provision your Kubernetes cluster in about 2 minutes. You’ll see the progress as the process completes.

Cluster Progress

Step 4: Access Your Cluster

  1. In the Clusters dashboard, open your cluster Overview or go to Settings > Access & Security
  2. Under Access, click Download Kubeconfig. Each user gets their own kubeconfig and downloads are tracked.
  3. If you need a new kubeconfig, use Rotate Credentials in Access & Security to invalidate the old one and download a fresh version. If your access is revoked, contact an administrator.

Set the KUBECONFIG environment variable to point to the downloaded file:

Admin note: Owners and admins can manage team kubeconfigs in Settings > Access & Security under Team Access. Use Rotate to invalidate a user’s kubeconfig or Revoke to remove access.

Terminal window
export KUBECONFIG=/path/to/your/kubeconfig.yaml

Verify the connection to your cluster:

Terminal window
kubectl get nodes

You should see a list of nodes in your cluster:

Terminal window
NAME                         STATUS   ROLES                       AGE     VERSION
one-master1                  Ready    control-plane,etcd,master   2m30s   v1.32.1-k3s1
one-pool-default-worker1     Ready    worker                      1m45s   v1.32.1-k3s1
one-pool-default-worker2     Ready    worker                      1m45s   v1.32.1-k3s1

Alternatively, you can use Lens to manage your cluster visually. Just add the kubeconfig file to Lens and connect to your cluster.

Next Steps

Now that you have your first cluster running, let’s set up some add-ons to transform it into a performant and production ready platform: