Kops is the most efficient way to create Kubernetes clusters in AWS. Via the kops configuration file, you can easily launch a custom cluster on the cloud. To build an etcd multi-node cluster, you could use the following section inside the kops configuration file:

etcdClusters:
  - etcdMembers:
    - instanceGroup: my-master-us-east-1a
      name: my-etcd-1
    - instanceGroup: my-master-us-east-1b
      name: my-etcd-2
    - instanceGroup: my-master-us-east-1c
      name: my-etcd-3

Normally, an instanceGroup means an auto-scaling group. You'll have to declare a related intanceGroup my-master-us-east-1x in the configuration file as well. We'll learn more about it in Chapter 6, Building Kubernetes on AWS. By default, kops still uses etcd2 at the time this book is being written; you could add a version key inside the kops configuration file, such as version: 3.3.0, under each instanceGroup.