<p>I'm using KOPs to launch a Kubernetes cluster in the AWS environment. </p>

<ol>
<li>Is there a way to set a predefined SSH key when calling <code>create cluster</code>?</li>
<li>If KOPs autogenerates the SSH key when running <code>create cluster</code>, is there a way to download this key to access the cluster nodes?</li>
</ol>

<p>Please read the Kops <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes/kops/blob/master/docs/security.md#ssh-access" rel="noreferrer">SSH docs</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>When using the default images, the SSH username will be admin, and the SSH private key is be the private key corresponding to the public key in kops get secrets --type sshpublickey admin. When creating a new cluster, the SSH public key can be specified with the --ssh-public-key option, and it defaults to ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So to answer your questions:</p>

<ol>
<li>Yes, you can set the key using <code>--ssh-public-key</code></li>
<li>When <code>--ssh-public-key</code> is not specified Kops does not autogenerate a key, but rather uses the key found in <code>~.ssh/id_rsa.pub</code></li>
</ol>
