Amazon EKS — What is Amazon EKS?
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service provided by AWS. It runs the Kubernetes control plane for you — the API server, etcd, scheduler, and controller manager — across multiple Availability Zones for high availability.
You don’t install, patch, or maintain the control plane. AWS does that. You focus on deploying your applications and managing your worker nodes.
Why EKS?
Kubernetes is powerful, but running it yourself is hard. You need to:
- Set up and maintain the control plane (API server, etcd, scheduler)
- Handle upgrades, patches, and security fixes
- Ensure high availability across failure domains
- Manage certificates, authentication, and authorization
- Monitor control plane health
EKS takes all of that off your plate. AWS guarantees a 99.95% SLA for the Kubernetes API server.
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Managed Control Plane | AWS runs API server + etcd across 3 AZs with automatic failover |
| CNCF Conformant | Runs upstream, unmodified Kubernetes — any K8s tool works |
| Multiple Compute Options | Managed Node Groups, Self-Managed Nodes, or Fargate (serverless) |
| Deep AWS Integration | VPC networking, IAM auth, EBS/EFS storage, ALB/NLB, CloudWatch |
| EKS Add-ons | AWS-managed lifecycle for core components (VPC CNI, CoreDNS, kube-proxy) |
| Security | KMS encryption, IRSA, Pod Identity, Security Groups for Pods |
| EKS Connector | Register and manage external K8s clusters from the EKS Console |
Who Uses EKS?
EKS is used by organizations of all sizes:
| Use Case | Example |
|---|---|
| Microservices | Running hundreds of services with independent deployment |
| Machine Learning | Training ML models with GPU nodes and batch processing |
| Batch Processing | Large-scale data processing with Jobs and Spot instances |
| Hybrid/Multi-Cloud | Consistent K8s across AWS, on-premises (EKS Anywhere), and other clouds |
| Platform Engineering | Internal developer platforms with self-service deployments |
| CI/CD Workloads | Running build agents and test suites in ephemeral containers |
EKS Ecosystem
EKS integrates with the broader AWS ecosystem:
- Compute: EC2, Fargate, Graviton, Spot Instances
- Networking: VPC, ALB, NLB, Route 53, PrivateLink
- Storage: EBS, EFS, FSx for Lustre
- Security: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, GuardDuty, Security Hub
- CI/CD: CodePipeline, CodeBuild, ECR
- Monitoring: CloudWatch, X-Ray, Managed Prometheus, Managed Grafana
- Serverless: Fargate, Lambda (for event-driven triggers)
EKS Version Support
EKS supports multiple Kubernetes versions simultaneously. As of 2025:
- Standard support: ~14 months from release (included in cluster fee)
- Extended support: Additional ~12 months (extra $0.60/cluster/hour)
- End of life: Clusters on unsupported versions are auto-upgraded
AWS typically supports the 4 most recent Kubernetes minor versions under standard support.
Tip: Always plan upgrades proactively. Don’t wait for extended support — it costs 6x more than the base cluster fee.
What’s Next?
Now that you know what EKS is, let’s compare it with ECS and Fargate to understand when each is the right choice.
