Amazon EKS — Introduction to Amazon EKS
Chapter 1 — Introduction to Amazon EKS
Welcome to the first chapter of the Amazon EKS tutorial. Before you touch any AWS console or run any command, let’s understand what EKS is, why it exists, and whether it’s the right choice for your workloads.
What You’ll Learn
- What Amazon EKS is and the problem it solves
- Managed Kubernetes vs self-managed Kubernetes
- EKS architecture at a high level
- EKS pricing model
- EKS vs ECS vs Fargate — when to use what
- Practice exercises to test your understanding
Chapter Topics
| # | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is Amazon EKS? | The managed Kubernetes service from AWS |
| 2 | Managed vs Self-Managed K8s | Why you’d choose EKS over kubeadm or kops |
| 3 | EKS Architecture Overview | Control plane, data plane, how they connect |
| 4 | EKS Pricing | What you pay for and cost optimization tips |
| 5 | EKS vs ECS vs Fargate | Choosing the right container service on AWS |
| 6 | Practice Exercises | 5 hands-on exercises to solidify concepts |
Prerequisites for This Chapter
- Basic understanding of containers (Docker)
- Basic AWS concepts (IAM, VPC, EC2, regions)
- Basic Kubernetes concepts (pods, deployments, services)
No hands-on AWS access needed yet — this chapter is conceptual.
Why Start Here?
Many engineers jump straight into eksctl create cluster without understanding what’s happening under the hood. That leads to:
- Clusters that cost 3x more than necessary
- Security misconfigurations that expose your workloads
- Networking issues that take days to debug
- Wrong service choice (EKS when ECS would suffice, or vice versa)
This chapter gives you the mental model that makes everything else in this tutorial click.
Ready? Start with What is Amazon EKS?
