Kubernetes (K8s) has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, but setting it up and managing its control plane can be complex and time-consuming. This is where Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) comes in—a fully managed Kubernetes service offered by AWS that simplifies cluster management while providing scalability, security, and high availability out of the box.

🔧 What is EKS?

Amazon EKS is AWS's managed Kubernetes service. It helps you run Kubernetes without needing to install and operate your own control plane or manage master nodes. AWS handles the heavy lifting, so you can focus on deploying and scaling your applications.

Key Features of EKS:

AWS-managed Control Plane:
EKS automatically provisions and manages the Kubernetes control plane, ensuring high availability and secure operations.

Master Node Management:
You don’t need to manage or maintain master nodes—AWS takes care of this for you.

Control Plane Components Installed by AWS:

1. API Server – Handles communication between the Kubernetes components and user commands.

2. Scheduler – Assigns workloads to specific nodes based on resource availability and requirements.

3. Controller Manager – Governs the cluster state, ensuring the desired number of pods and other resources.

4. etcd – The key-value store that acts as Kubernetes’ backing store for all cluster data.

🤔 Why Use EKS?

Fully managed: Focus on your workloads rather than infrastructure.

Highly available and secure: AWS distributes the control plane across multiple Availability Zones (AZs).

Integrated wthe AWS AWS ecosystem: Leverage IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and other services easily.

Scalable: Handle production workloads with ease, whether small-scale or enterprise-level.

Certified Kubernetes: Easily migrate applications to/from other Kubernetes environments.

⚙️ Worker Nodes in EKS

While AWS manages the control plane, you have options when it comes to managing worker nodes—the nodes that run your actual container workloads.

1. Self-managed Nodes
   You provision EC2 instances manually and join them to your EKS cluster.
   Full control over node configurations, AMIs, instance types, and lifecycle.
   Ideal for advanced use cases where custom configuration or integration is needed.
   Requires you to handle updates, scaling, and security patches.

2. Managed Node Groups
   AWS provisions and manages EC2 instances for you within an Auto Scaling group.
   Easier to set up and operate compared to self-managed nodes.
   Supports automatic upgrades and lifecycle management.
   Integrated with AWS CloudFormation and IAM.

3. AWS Fargate
   A serverless compute engine for containers.
   No need to manage EC2 instances at all—AWS runs your containers on demand.
   Ideal for applications with variable workloads or short-lived tasks.
   Reduced operational overhead and improved cost-efficiency for small to medium workloads.