How to Import an AWS EKS Add-on into Terraform

Import AWS EKS Add-on with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon EKS resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS EKS Add-on to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all aws --region us-east-1

terraback aws import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = aws_eks_addon.vpc_cni
  id = "app-prod:vpc-cni"
}

Example aws_eks_addon configuration

Here is a realistic AWS EKS Add-on block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_eks_addon" "vpc_cni" {
  cluster_name  = "app-prod"
  addon_name    = "vpc-cni"
  addon_version = "v1.18.1-eksbuild.3"
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS EKS Add-on

• The import ID uses a colon separator, CLUSTER-NAME:ADDON-NAME, not a slash.
• addon_name must be a valid EKS managed add-on identifier (for example vpc-cni, coredns, kube-proxy, aws-ebs-csi-driver), not a free-form label.
• Some add-ons need a service_account_role_arn for IRSA; omitting it after import can break the add-on even though the import succeeds.
• The cluster must already exist; import or declare aws_eks_cluster first and reference cluster_name from it.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_eks_addon block by hand, then run terraform import aws_eks_addon.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other AWS resources