In this recipe, we created a domain (either purchased from Amazon or another registrar) and a hosted zone, because kops uses DNS for discovery. Although it needs to be a valid DNS name, starting with kops 1.6.2, DNS configuration became optional. Instead of an actual domain or subdomain, a gossip-based cluster can be easily created. By using a registered domain name, we make our clusters easier to share and accessible by others for production use.

If, for any reason, you prefer a gossip-based cluster, you can skip hosted zone creation and use a cluster name that ends with k8s.local :

$ export KOPS_CLUSTER_NAME=devopscookbook.k8s.local
$ export KOPS_STATE_STORE=s3://devops-cookbook-state-store

Setting the environmental parameters for kops is optional but highly recommended since it shortens your CLI commands.