Amazon EKS Reviews

My main use cases for Amazon EKS are securing the clusters and providing mesh gateways between the clusters.

The features that I find useful in Amazon EKS are Istio, Webhooks, service accounts, and ReplicaSets with different service accounts and accounts that we work with.

The main benefits that I received from using Amazon EKS are that it is a managed cluster and offers simplicity.

I am not the right person to ask what could be improved in Amazon EKS to make this tool better for the next release. A continuation of the managed pieces would be beneficial because there is no integration of clusters. They are all separate with no real managed cluster type of capability.

I have been working with Amazon EKS for about 3 and 1/2 to 4 years.

The initial setup for Amazon EKS is not straightforward. Kubernetes is not an easy technology because there are many technologies in the cluster. You need to understand infrastructure code to deploy it and understand all of the requirements alongside it. You cannot simply request deployment of EKS clusters as it does not work that way.

I would rate the setup for Amazon EKS as a three because I need to have other technologies and other tool sets to make it work. I cannot just go through Amazon's console and request a three-node cluster deployment because that does not work.

Regarding stability, Amazon EKS is stable. Once it is up, it works. I would rate it as a nine.

For scalability, Amazon EKS is scalable. I would rate it as a nine.

I have never contacted customer support for any issues on Amazon EKS.

Neutral

The solutions I evaluated before working with Amazon EKS include Grafana, Prometheus, K9s, Istio, and Consul.

The main benefits in Amazon EKS compared to those tools are that it is a different tool set completely, and they provide better visibility and connectivity.

The initial setup for Amazon EKS is not straightforward. Kubernetes is not an easy technology because there are many technologies in the cluster. You need to understand infrastructure code to deploy it and understand all of the requirements alongside it. You cannot simply request deployment of EKS clusters as it does not work that way.

I would rate the setup for Amazon EKS as a three because I need to have other technologies and other tool sets to make it work. I cannot just go through Amazon's console and request a three-node cluster deployment because that does not work.

I suggest understanding the entire form before understanding Kubernetes. I would rate Amazon EKS as a seven out of ten because Kubernetes across all CSPs is complicated. I do not think it is an easy technology to give it anything more than a seven.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon EKS is used as a container orchestration platform. Customers use it to develop applications which are containerized and need to be deployed. Kubernetes is the most popular platform across the industry.

Amazon EKS offers replatforming and migration capabilities to our customers, enabling them to move from AWS to other platforms like AKS with minimal changes. It has also helped in smooth integration with other AWS services, especially API gateways and databases.

The serverless capability of Amazon EKS is quite valuable. Earlier, it was necessary to know the exact configuration, including the number of pods and nodes. Now, with the serverless option, you can deploy everything and AWS handles the infrastructure.

Amazon EKS could improve in its pricing model, particularly for medium-sized customers who might find the support costs high.

I have used Amazon EKS for the past five to six years.

I rate the stability of Amazon EKS as ten out of ten. It is highly stable.

Amazon EKS has high scalability. It can scale very well according to needs, and it doesn't have any issues with scalability.

Amazon's technical support is quite good, especially for those who purchase support services. As a partner, we receive excellent support due to our relationship with Amazon.

Positive

The initial setup of Amazon EKS is much less complex compared to setting up Kubernetes manually on Linux virtual machines, as it takes away the complexities of installing and configuring everything.

We have experience working with both EKS from AWS and AKS from Microsoft Azure, as well as Google GKE.

For those who are Amazon customers and want to deploy containerized applications, Amazon EKS is the best option.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I deal with application development. I have used AWS services for configuring elastic search, deploying in pods, and using the CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins to build and deploy applications.

Amazon EKS allows upscaling and downscaling by reallocating resources. It is possible to configure everything, monitor applications, and perform routing in pods, securing the application with whitelisting. Datadog can be used to trace applications for performance issues or errors. It is an effective platform for cloud operations on AWS, similar to its counterpart on Azure.

There is room for improvement in making Amazon EKS less error-prone when writing on the YAML file. A UI could help generate config files, simplifying the process for developers who are not architects. It is very time-consuming, and companies often expect developers to do everything, which can be overwhelming.

I have used AWS for three or four years, specifically for Amazon EKS for two years.

It is not easy to configure Amazon EKS, and it requires very detailed attention to configuration and deployment. It can be error-prone and time-consuming to redeploy until a stable configuration is achieved.

Amazon EKS is effective for scalability, providing features for upscaling and downscaling resources as needed.

Their technical support team is good, but they do not instruct on what to do. Having to know what questions to ask is essential. The documentation is adequate but could include more practical insights.

Neutral

The pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups. Offering a free version could help small companies.

Overall, Amazon EKS is a great technology, but the knowledge required to use it is scarce. It is a skill in itself, and developers must undertake multiple roles, which can be difficult. I rate Amazon EKS a seven because it is not easy for developers to configure without a solid base of knowledge.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The main reasons for using Amazon EKS in our use were third-party solutions that were distributed as Helm charts. We were using Rancher to manage multi-cloud deployment for unification. We are also using it for evaluation purposes, building customer pilots and prototypes. Sometimes it is easy to make the build chain run through and come out as images and deploy them into Kubernetes.

It completely depends on use case. If you have got a very dynamic or a requirement to scale very fast with nodes, then Amazon EKS is a very good choice because you have got that reach and the ability to scale quickly. But if you have got a fairly static load, it becomes quite expensive quite quickly. They are expensive CPU cycles.

The main benefit of Amazon EKS is its rapid deployment. The fact that we can deploy it very quickly with infrastructure as code and then tear it down again when we are finished.

There is no real advantage to us from Amazon EKS because the advantage is the fact that we have a unified management product so we can deploy concurrently into multiple clouds and on-prem out of one pane of glass. That is the key thing there. As far as the development and presentation, sometimes it is easy just to load it up through kube control, sometimes you put it through a GUI control in front.

We have not been using it from the point of the application using the IAM. We have been using it because quite often our customers are tied back to usually Entra ID and things like that.

The only concerns I had with Amazon EKS were related to cost, the usual problem you have with cloud. It is fine if you can exploit it for dynamic loads, bring it up, get rid of it again. That is where its strength is. You pay for that premium, but as far as running the thing under constant load, it is a very expensive way of deploying.

In the early days, there were a couple of vulnerabilities exploited from the single control plane per region. So there is nothing stopping me deploying multi-region, and that means multiple control planes. So I could deal with that, the infrastructure handled the criticality. The only thing that I could possibly run into a problem with, which I have not had to at this point, but architecturally, is with regulated technologies, banks, that sort of stuff where you cannot be single provider sensitive.

We have been dealing with it from the beginning almost, since 2019.

Only in the past I think it had issues. The fact that regions only had a single control plane left a little bit of vulnerability in there, certainly in the early days, but I do not think that matters now. They seem to have solved that.

I had no problem. It was stable. Very stable.

It was very easy to scale.

The current stuff I am working with has been Kubernetes and building out operational software using Kubernetes. I was actually reviewing Nutanix as an option for some of the stuff I was building out.

Mainly on-prem, we are doing production work with a number of customers. We support them, we run an operational arm as well. I have been involved in platforming on Kubernetes, but we happily support any variant. We are cloud agnostic. So these distributions, we would use Amazon EKS or AKS, but not for long.

The driver in Rancher, as long as I do not have anything extremely different or complex, works completely the same whether I am driving the application onto Amazon EKS or onto a local on-prem.

We have not been using the automated patching. If we were in anger, we do not run the stuff long enough in Amazon EKS at the moment. Really, it is just up in demo and then torn down again. A lot of the stuff is being driven from other automation anyway, more infrastructure as code stuff. So that actually just gets driven completely in there.

I think that Amazon, every other provider, is adapting to the changes in the market now because the major cloud benefits are now fully saturated. Nobody else is going in for those benefits. They are starting to hit the reality of regulated technologies that are high value cannot be under a single provider. So a single cloud provider is not sufficient to support critical industry anymore. You have to have either multiple cloud or hybrid just to meet regulation in the future. So that constrains some of the flexibility. But the clouds are all working towards more on-prem extension, that sort of thing to make it more feasible.

I would rate Amazon EKS a six out of ten. I have a particular penchant for not actually overscoring anymore because of the way that people use this stuff. In other words, I consider adequate doing what it says they claim it to do. So that is a five or a six as they did what they said they would do. There is nothing wrong with that. It is what we agreed. I paid for it, they delivered it. I am satisfied.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I use Amazon EKS to provide the computing power for my applications. We have over thirty clusters in Amazon EKS. Our team uses Amazon EKS to deploy new applications using Helm and to manage our infrastructure. We use Amazon EKS to scale and deploy more applications using different namespaces. Amazon EKS services help us provide clusters where we deploy APIs, services, cron jobs, and other applications to support our services.

The features I find most valuable in Amazon EKS include the VPC CNI, which provides networking inside the cluster, and the EBS CSI driver, which is an example of the add-ons used with Amazon EKS. Kube-proxy for DNS is also a valuable feature. The features we use for managing container applications, like scheduling and scaling, simplify our use of Amazon EKS.

I would like to see improvements in the management capabilities that are native to AWS for Amazon EKS. Our current use involves using a different tool to administer the management, and I believe enhancing this aspect would be beneficial.

I have been using Amazon EKS for four or five years, mostly in financial services.

During the initial setup, I needed to learn about Docker, networking, and microservices, which was a challenge as I didn't have a background in microservices. My first application took three months to deploy, but now, with automation and CI/CD, we can deploy cycles of twenty applications swiftly. Initially, two people were required to deploy Amazon EKS.

Amazon EKS is very stable, and when properly configured, I rate it ten out of ten. In my notes, it's a nine. I did experience some challenges with network stability but was able to resolve them with AWS technical support.

We use the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) to provide elasticity to our applications. This allows us to scale our applications or APIs as needed, offering reliability through the automation of scaling processes. I rate the scalability as higher than eight.

Technical support from AWS for Amazon EKS is excellent. I rate it eight out of ten. Recently, we faced a network issue, and AWS technical support provided guidance to resolve the problem successfully. Their support was crucial for directing our efforts and solving our IP-related issues.

Positive

My first experience with Amazon EKS was difficult, and I would rate the initial setup as two because it was challenging without prior experience in microservices. However, after the initial setup, my perception improved, and I now rate it as five or six.

Two people were necessary to deploy my Amazon EKS.

We are making a significant effort to transform our usage of Amazon EKS, which was previously rated as eight or nine in terms of cost. Now, it stands at six or seven due to optimizing our workload.

Overall, I rate Amazon EKS as a nine out of ten. It's a very stable and reliable product.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our primary use case is related to our ecommerce solution, which is very high in terms of data in the database and products. It has one hundred thousand first line items. We developed a system connected with AWS services to translate search keywords into different languages and improve search results accuracy on our ecommerce site.

The scalability has really helped us a lot in enhancing the customer experience and ensuring quick results. The ROI is really good, especially when compared with other services on-premises.

Amazon EKS provides good support. The integration and stability are clear and reliable. The scalability is excellent, allowing us to efficiently handle customer experiences and improve operational efficiency.

Sometimes, we face minor connectivity issues. However, it depends on the applications we are using. Improvement might be needed based on different use cases.

We have been using it since 2015.

The stability of Amazon EKS is clear and reliable.

Amazon EKS's scalability is clear and has improved our operational efficiency a lot.

The customer service and support are good, and we have a paid subscription that provides priority support.

Positive

The initial setup was handled by third parties. It involved some complexities, and appropriate inputs were necessary.

We worked with a third-party team for implementation, including many developers.

We did several ROIs, which showed positive results. It's particularly beneficial compared to investing in hardware.

The licensing cost is acceptable.

Before implementing, ensure thorough research and ROI analysis. The implementation should be handled by experienced personnel.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

I am working mostly on AWS infrastructure services, such as EC2, EKS, RDS, CloudFormation, IAM, and CloudWatch. I have around one year of experience with Kubernetes and have been using AWS services continuously for three years. My responsibilities include working on server storage, containerization, monitoring, and access policies.

Simplifies Kubernetes setup and management.AWS handles cluster upgrades, patches, and availability.Seamlessly integrates with AWS services like IAM, CloudWatch, and VPC.Access to advanced networking, security, and monitoring tools.EKS automatically deploys the Kubernetes control plane across multiple AWS Availability Zones for fault tolerance.

EKS incurs an additional management fee ($0.10 per hour per cluster) along with EC2 or Fargate costs.May be expensive for smaller workloads compared to alternatives like AWS ECS.Requires expertise to configure and manage Kubernetes resources effectively.Networking (e.g., setting up VPCs, subnets, and service endpoints) can be complex.Simplifies managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, especially for organizations with hybrid or multi-region setups.Integrated dashboards for Kubernetes metrics, logs, and traces.Simplifies observability without needing third-party tools.

I have around one year of experience using Kubernetes with AWS.

In my project, AWS EKS has shown stability without any issues.

EKS offers excellent scalability, especially compared to Docker Swarm. The ability to scale based on requirements by deploying additional containers is a strong point for Kubernetes.

I have not contacted technical support regarding EKS.

Positive

I have explored Google Kubernetes Service in my personal projects but did not work on any other Kubernetes projects before EKS.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward when using the AWS Management Console. Setting up clusters and nodes is simplified through AWS's interface compared to on-premises. It took approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete the setup.

I do not have specific details on EKS's pricing and licensing compared to other services. However, in general, deploying in the cloud offers lower latency and high availability and reduces manual intervention and responsibility, leading to some operational efficiencies.

I have worked with Google Kubernetes Service in my personal space but have not evaluated others for professional use.

For large-scale enterprise solutions, Kubernetes is recommended due to its scalability. Despite costing considerations, EKS alleviates the burden of procedural complexities, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.