Amazon EKS Reviews

For EKS, we deployed a Django application. The application built the whole image and stored it in ECR (Elastic Container Registry). We stored the code repository in GitHub, but the image was in ECR. We also had another repository for the Kubernetes manifest files. So we were deploying it in a different image, and the code was in a different image. We had a whole pipeline for deployment, from CodePipeline to ECR, and then from ECR to Kubernetes.

I work with different AWS solutions, such as Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and VPC. I use services like EC2, S3, and VPC every day, so I'm not including those. I've also used API Gateway, and currently, I also use AWS Bedrock.

The good thing was the integration of services. The only thing we had to think about was how we were pushing the code to GitHub or Bitbucket. After that, everything was taken care of by AWS. 

Everything was connected: the code and the real-time deployment. Testing was done within the same pipeline using CodeBuild. CodeBuild was handling multiple tasks: testing the code, deploying it to ECR, and then running it on AWS Fargate for development or testing. Once it was working fine, we had an approval stage. After approval, we deployed it to EKS using the command line from the same AWS CodeBuild process.

The scalability of EKS is good. We've compared it with multiple platforms, and we've also worked with GCP. There are more good options available in GCP compared to EKS.

But the good thing about EKS is that we can use it for serverless deployments using Fargate. It gives you two options: deploy on EC2 or deploy on Fargate. EC2 runs 24/7 and costs you money, but Fargate only runs when you need it. So EKS was really helpful for saving costs with that serverless capability.

I would like to see a warm-up time for AWS Fargate, similar to what GCP Cloud Run has. This would improve internal security. I would also really love to see lower costs compared to other cloud vendors. AWS can get quite expensive.

I've been working with EKS on and off for the last two years. Some of the projects were my own, and some were development projects.

They have good documentation and lots of blogs on Amazon AWS, so we mostly follow those. We haven't reached out to technical support directly. We had a plan for technical support, but it took them more time to fully help us. 

Sometimes the issue is on our code side and not on AWS's side. Getting the customer service and support involved in our whole process takes a long time. It's better to research for a few hours and fix it yourself rather than waiting for a week or so.

GKE gives you really good monitoring and logging, where you can see every bit of information flowing in your environment. AWS provides the same thing with CloudWatch, but it's much easier in GKE to see what's exactly going on. So monitoring and the transparency of what's happening would be one thing AWS needs to improve.

The pros of EKS are that it makes deployment really easy. You just need to package your image in ECR, and then everything goes very smoothly. You don't have to worry about running or managing Kubernetes. It gives you a managed control plane, and they replicate the control plane over different regions. So there's very little chance that it will go down. Reliability is really high with AWS.

When we started we had an issue with rollbacks. We had problems because we had to specify certain AWS parameters in order to deploy it properly. We consulted the documentation and resolved it that way.

We did some testing, and that took about one month with it. Then we started with a very small infrastructure on EKS, migrating some of our traditional websites to EKS directly. So, the initial setup took about two months. 

But we didn't use it for microservices; we only used it for two services: one was our platform service, and the other was Redis.

In my case, I handled the deployment part. I had a manager, so I just took his approval and gave him the deployment design. He was overseeing everything, but I was doing almost all the AWS work. The developers were really helpful in making the code run correctly with the image versioning.

Users have to maintain things. For example, we faced an issue where we had a lot of requests coming in, and we weren't ready with enough resources at the time. We had to manually increase the Kubernetes nodes. That was an issue with horizontal scaling. It was our mistake because we didn't automate it.

We shifted from EKS to GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). We are saving around 20% with that change.

I already have recommended it to many people. If you're using AWS for other services, definitely go with EKS because it doesn't make sense to move to another cloud vendor if you're already using everything in AWS. The integration is really good. You get AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) on top of it, load balancer, GuardDuty, and Inspector. So security-wise, it's really nice to have EKS surrounded by those security tools.

My advice would be to try to go with AWS Fargate initially. Try to understand how ECR (Elastic Container Registry) works because it also costs you money, so make sure your image isn't too big. And if you can, go with AWS CodeCommit, it makes things very fast. And for EKS, they can use Fargate with EKS as a service. So, users don't have to worry about scalability and reliability. It's totally managed from the user's end.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our typical use case for Amazon EKS is that we have a number of applications and microservices that we host in EKS. We have a separate code base for the infrastructure platform, and the microservice team and the application team will be deploying their microservices on their own. We have configured it in a way that it could be easily accessible for developers as well as the platform engineers; we just platformize things. Earlier, I was using ECS, and the reason we use Amazon EKS is for better adaptation of Kubernetes, fitting our multi-tenant model.

The best features of Amazon EKS are that it is very plain by itself, but we use a number of optimizations, such as Carpenter for scaling and node auto-scaling, and Keda for application and microservices auto-scaling, as an event-based auto-scaler. Additionally, we use Portainer less, and for configuration, we utilize Cert Manager and Istio. It's not only Amazon EKS but a combination of various components within it.

By default, if you just install Amazon EKS, you can deploy your application, but to have it enterprise-ready, you have to configure a number of other things that will boost productivity.

Amazon EKS's deep integration with AWS services, such as IAM and elastic load balancing, has created some challenges. For example, we have something in place already, and there are some issues with enabling FIPS, which is FedRAMP compliant for the load balancers. You cannot change the SSL policy for the load balancer; I am not sure if it has been patched by AWS yet. However, apart from that, we use it effectively, and it is more flexible.

Regarding built-in observability in Amazon EKS, there is CloudWatch and CloudTrail. However, you cannot profile the applications; we can collect logs in S3, but there is no streaming solution available. Only CloudWatch exists, so we use other tools for observability and do not depend solely on CloudWatch, only relying on it for crucial workloads and infrastructure logs.

Amazon EKS can be improved by having the maintenance of Kubernetes versions managed better, as everything is handled by the Kubernetes team and possibly a separate team at AWS. We have to constantly maintain upgrades and ensure EKS add-ons are up-to-date, requiring us to upgrade the Kubernetes version and releases. They could provide a managed service in the backend instead of making customers handle it; we are currently doing it, but it's a regular activity we do per quarter.

I have around six years of experience with Amazon EKS.

Amazon EKS is a stable solution, as it is only available in AWS alone.

It is a scalable solution for us.

Before using Amazon EKS, I was using ECS. I switched from ECS to Amazon EKS because our product design changed. With numerous small services that you don't want to manage the backend infrastructure for, you can easily deploy and let it be with ECS; it is a more straightforward solution. However, considering cost with Amazon EKS, it may be pretty high, but it serves its purpose very effectively without management overhead.

If you are going with Amazon EKS, you must change your deployment strategy and develop applications for Kubernetes, writing deployments and pods, or stateful sets, which provides more flexibility. There are pros and cons to both solutions, and you have to evaluate which will suit your use case. In our situation, we had some applications in ECS as in Amazon EKS, and that was an architectural decision discussed internally within teams.

The initial setup with Amazon EKS was hard initially, but being accustomed to it now, it's not that difficult; it's relatively easy.

We have seen ROI with Amazon EKS; we have a separate team actively working on it. We have cost explorer available, and a bill forecast based on usage allows us to determine whether resources are underutilized or overutilized. You can generate reports and analyze them. I have done this for ECS, but for Amazon EKS, I haven't worked on cost savings directly, as there is a separate team responsible for that.

My experience with pricing for Amazon EKS is limited as there's a separate team for that, and I do not have much knowledge of specifics. However, the pricing is based on the instance type we use in the EKS node group, so it should cover that aspect; their pricing is generally easy to understand in terms of instances.

We are using a cloud deployment model. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight.

The use cases for the product involve provisioning of infrastructure and auto provisioning of infrastructure.

I have managed on-premise deployments in my use case with a Helm chart.

The biggest advantages of Amazon EKS include load balancing, auto scalability, and platform integration.

The solution includes automated node provisioning features.

The integration with AWS services involves platform services only.

We usually get deployed and only need to tweak the source code; however, I think the monitoring part and observability part could be improved.

I have been selling it for almost two years.

The scalability of Amazon EKS deserves a perfect rating of ten.

The technical support from Amazon deserves a rating of ten.

Positive

I would rate the ease of installing Amazon EKS in the middle area, giving it a five.

I have moved to pre-sales activity now.

I am selling Kubernetes Engine from Amazon.

I can rate Amazon EKS as nine because I just need to see some improvement.

I want to be a reference for Amazon.

The overall rating for Amazon EKS is 9 out of 10.

Amazon EKS is like Kubernetes, but it helps manage our nodes and scalability in AWS.

Amazon EKS should improve its integration. Our company does not maintain the external infrastructure.

Amazon EKS should include a graphic interface. Like there is a dashboard in Kubernetes, Amazon EKS should have a graphic interface that is more fluid, more fluent and contains more information.

I have been using Amazon EKS for six months.

Amazon EKS is a very stable solution.

I rate Amazon EKS a nine out of ten for stability.

Amazon EKS has high scalability. The solution has 10 to 15 endpoints in our organization. The solution is used 24/7 in our organization.

I rate Amazon EKS a nine out of ten for scalability.

Before Amazon EKS, I previously used OpenShift and Kubernetes-native.

The solution's initial setup depends on the application inside it. It's easy to have Kubernetes, but deploying other solutions with EKS is hard. It is easy to deploy Amazon EKS in general. I rate the solution an eight out of ten for the ease of its setup.

It took us half a day to deploy Amazon EKS. The solution's deployment depends on whether you want to use the Terraform ECR infrastructure. You have to go to the panel in AWS and deploy Amazon EKS. We needed an integrator for the first time, but then we did everything ourselves for the next deployments. Only one person is required for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

Amazon EKS is quite pricey, but the functionality it provides is worth it. The solution has no additional costs, but it depends on the number of nodes used inside it. If we have a lot of traffic, we should scale many nodes, which would cost a lot.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

Overall, I rate Amazon EKS a nine out of ten.

We deploy different solutions on the EKS cluster for our clients to use.

Since it is a managed service of AWS, Amazon EKS helps us in the managing and autoscaling of services. We don't have to worry about multiple things like managing the nodes or IP addresses and can focus on our work.

Through Amazon EKS, we can have the blue-green deployment very easily.

The management of the nodes in Amazon EKS should be improved. AWS should reduce the constant upgrades of the nodes of Amazon EKS or EC2 machines.

I have been using Amazon EKS for almost two years.

I rate Amazon EKS a seven out of ten for stability.

I rate Amazon EKS a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution's technical support is very good.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is straightforward for us because we use Terraform scripts, which we have written and can reuse. It is the same for the console.

If your application goes to production, you will definitely see an ROI with Amazon EKS.

The solution's pricing is fair enough and a little less costly.

I would recommend Amazon EKS to other users.

Overall, I rate Amazon EKS an eight out of ten.

We use Amazon EKS to manage containerization within our microservices environment.

The product's most valuable features are scalability, observability, and performance.

They could add logging features. At present, we use external tools to increase and decrease the number of instances.

We have been using Amazon EKS for three years.

It is a stable service. We never encountered system downtime.

In organizational environments, especially when utilizing the console, EKS is the primary choice. Out of ten clients, approximately eight opt for EKS due to its scalability and robust features.

We contacted AWS support for EKS when we encountered difficulties connecting to private subnets. The support team guided us through the necessary steps to address these issues.

Scalability and security considerations drove the decision to migrate to EKS from another product.

The initial setup was straightforward, especially when Terraform was utilized to generate the setup. We must make minor adjustments, such as changing the name and configuring VPN settings. Overall, it's a relatively easy task for me.

The platform is worth the investment.

The product pricing depends on the specific requirements. For instance, clients between $3000-$4000 per month might find the pricing reasonable, with clusters priced around $70 to $80 plus additional costs. However, the actual pricing can vary based on the number of services utilized.

With numerous tools and plugins available for EKS like Graphite and Prometheus, users can effectively manage logs and monitor performance.

For beginners, it's essential to grasp the fundamentals of Docker and containerization and understand how containers operate. Once these basics are clear, the next step is to familiarize oneself with Kubernetes and container orchestration concepts.

I rate it a nine out of ten.

I use the solution for its microservices. I used the product in some of my personal projects for deploying applications. From an organizational standpoint, the product is useful for its microservices.

When it comes to Amazon EKS, there are IAM permissions and RBAC. When you create an IAM user, you give the privileges on the cluster level, but there won't be anything inside the clusters. In the clusters and their respective files, you will have to map the IAM user created with the help of AWS. The documentation part of the product is an area of concern that needs to be made easier from an improvement perspective.

I have experience with the tool for the past six to eight months. For some of my personal projects, I have been using the product for a year and a half. I am a customer of the product.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The product's initial setup phase is easy since it is only based on a one-line command to help you set up an EKS cluster.

The product is available at such a huge scale in the market since the resources that are offered under the tool are competitively priced and available at a much cheaper rate compared to other solutions.

One of the aspects of Kubecost and Amazon EKS is that you don't have to manage the master node. The scalability and connectivity between API servers and its resources, including its scheduler and controller, are all taken care of by AWS. Not being easily able to log in to your master node makes things secure.

I found the cluster autoscaler of AWS to be very helpful. It is easier for users since the cluster autoscaler takes care of the nodes, making everything easy for me. With the cluster autoscaler, all the resources are presented to me, so I need not consider any integrations from the outside environment. The aforementioned reasons made it easy for me to set up the software and scale down the resources easily.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. Kubernetes is a product from Google, which offers good compatibility. Kubernetes and its compatibility with Amazon is decent enough for users, in my opinion.

I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.

Amazon EKS can be used to implement and create clusters. It is also used to deploy and secure the already configured applications. EKS is a cloud-based container management service that integrates with Kubernetes to deploy applications. It automatically manages and scales clusters of infrastructure resources on AWS with Kubernetes.

EKS eliminates the need to install, operate, or maintain a Kubernetes control plane on AWS. Amazon handles everything. We just need to know how we can make it more secure, and we can use it to deploy your applications. It scales automatically, making it one of the best services.

Assigning roles and responsibilities to interact with a created cluster as a user over a command prompt is cumbersome on AWS. Initially, we create a user to interact with a cluster. Since everyone can't use the cluster, we need to assign some permissions to that specific user. It is very cumbersome to assign permissions to users to interact with a cluster. We always get errors, and it takes many days to resolve that permission issue before the user can start interacting with the cluster.

I have been using Amazon EKS for eight years.

Amazon EKS is a stable solution.

Amazon EKS is a scalable solution.

The solution’s technical support is good.

The solution’s initial setup is easy, but assigning permissions to users is difficult.

Amazon EKS is not a cheap solution.

Google Cloud Platform has a service similar to EKS called GKE. It's very easy to implement permissions in GKE as compared to EKS.

Overall, I rate Amazon EKS a seven out of ten.