I'm trying to create a Kubernetes deployment with an associated ServiceAccount, which is linked to an AWS IAM role. This yaml produces the desired result and the associated deployment (included at the bottom) spins up correctly:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: service-account
  namespace: example
  annotations:
    eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn: ROLE_ARN

However, I would like to instead use the Terraform Kubernetes provider to create the ServiceAccount:

resource "kubernetes_service_account" "this" {
  metadata {
    name = "service-account2"
    namespace = "example"
    annotations = {
      "eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn" = "ROLE_ARN"
    }
  }
}

Unfortunately, when I create the ServiceAccount this way, the ReplicaSet for my deployment fails with the error:

Error creating: Internal error occurred: Internal error occurred: jsonpatch add operation does not apply: doc is missing path: "/spec/volumes/0"

I have confirmed that it does not matter whether the Deployment is created via Terraform or kubectl; it will not work with the Terraform-created service-account2, but works fine with the kubectl-created service-account. Switching a deployment back and forth between service-account and service-account2 correspondingly makes it work or not work as you might expect.

I have also determined that the eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn is related; creating/assigning ServiceAccounts that do not try to link back to an IAM role work regardless of whether they were created via Terraform or kubectl.

Using kubectl to describe the Deployment, ReplicaSet, ServiceAccount, and associated Secret, I don't see any obvious differences, though I will admit I'm not entirely sure what I might be looking for.

Here is a simple deployment yaml that exhibits the problem:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: example
  namespace: example
spec:
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: example
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: service-account # or "service-account2"
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:1.7.8