Amazon EKS Reviews

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)

I describe my use cases as being for web applications and for API applications.

Simplified application deployments and infrastructure management

What I find best about Amazon EKS is its simplicity and that I don't need to care about control plane. IAM authentication has been a great feature, and with the latest changes, we don't need AWS ConfigMap.

The benefits I have seen from using it include simplified Terraform code, and the fact that we don't need to configure OIDC anymore. Additionally, we don't need to manage ConfigMap.

I don't know how Amazon EKS can be improved; it's ideal already.

I have been using it for five years, since 2020.

I don't remember any issues at all regarding stability.

The scalability is great with Carpenter; however, I don't know about the scalability of control plane, but worker nodes scalability with Carpenter is great.

I have used their support team from Amazon a few times, and it was good, as I remember.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was not complex.

The pricing is cheap, around two USD per day for one cluster, and I think it's a good price.

AWS ECS

I have used Amazon EKS integration with IAM.

I can't remember any challenges while using it, maybe in past years, but not now.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give Amazon EKS a rating of 9.

I would definitely recommend it to other people.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I am using Amazon EKS as an integrator.

Regarding Amazon EKS integration with IAM, I do not use it.

To use Amazon EKS as a cloud provider and as a Kubernetes cluster managed by a cloud provider, it offers more benefits because you don't have to configure the cluster on your own. You can use the default configuration and just set the right networking space, set the subnet, and a few other things, but you don't have to raise up or configure your own cluster.

Self-healing nodes help to minimize administrative burdens in the organization. It helps to keep the nodes up and running. Then you can use other solutions to minimize costs or to keep the nodes running most of the time.

You can use Amazon EKS to raise up clusters and deploy applications in the cluster. The cluster is managed by Amazon, so you don't have to configure it. You can use the basic configuration of Amazon, and you don't have to interact with etcd or with the Kubernetes most inner parts. It's more simple to use.

Amazon EKS can give you more flexibility to configure on their own. In general, it's a good product. There are many different products that can fit the needs of the user or the customer in every part of AWS. In Amazon EKS, they can give a class that can be more configurable from the user or expert user rather than just using the default EKS.

Amazon EKS support for AWS tools integration has an impact on application development and management because everything is deployed on the cluster. You have to debug the various pods in Kubernetes. There isn't a direct impact, but there is an impact because everything you deploy through the pipelines goes to the cluster and there you have to integrate the cycle.

The main problem or area for improvement is flexibility in configuration. This is the only concerning part and nothing apart from this.

I have been using solutions similar to Amazon EKS from other vendors. I used GKE from Google, the cluster of Azure, and I also used KMinikube. Of course, it's not the same thing, but in general, it can be compared. For testing, K3s are just different distributions. In general, I have used other cloud providers.

It's quite easy to install Amazon EKS.

In Amazon EKS, I see it as a stable product. I don't see any particular issues in terms of nodes or performance.

I believe Amazon EKS is scalable.

I have never used the technical support from AWS.

Neutral

I see return on investment with Amazon EKS. You can save in terms of time because you can raise up a cluster or more nodes, and you can raise up the storage of the particular node in a few minutes. You don't have to take care of managing the machines directly. There is significant time-saving. You don't have to take care of the rack system because AWS has a team that works that part. You have just to pay. In terms of price saving and money saving, it depends on everything, but in general, you're going to save money.

In general, the price of Amazon EKS is expensive, but it depends a lot on the user knowledge of the tool and how we can manage the cost, which solution offers better, which solutions they can use to reduce the cost. For example, the different VM types, the Preemptible VMs or the Preemptible nodes, or you can pay one time for the use, you can reserve the machines. There are many different ways to reduce the cost.

I see big differences between Amazon EKS and GKE. The way you install the cluster is different. In GKE, when you install the cluster, it raises the nodes for you. In AWS, you can install the cluster and then you have to raise up the node using Auto Scaling Group or whatever. It's more integrated maybe. Also in terms of documentation, Google is different from Amazon.

Regarding the automated patching feature for Kubernetes clusters in Amazon EKS, I don't know any patching feature.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Amazon EKS is to host one of my AI agents which I built recently in my company. I use Amazon EKS to host my AI agent, which is a sprint report agent that fetches the company's data from Jira and prepares a sprint report for the complete team. The agent runs on Amazon EKS for high availability and reliability, hosted on nodes, and it is running on a GPT OS's model in the back end.

I have designed this agent for high availability on Amazon EKS because if I hosted it on any other platform, there would be chances of downtime. I have set it up in such a way that if there is any downtime, a new node is already up and running so that my use case is not affected and the users can use it seamlessly without any issues.

The best features Amazon EKS offers in my experience are its reliability and high availability, and also the support that AWS provides. The reliability and high availability have helped me specifically because there were some configuration issues at my end for the agent, which caused it to go down repeatedly. Due to the high availability features, every time a node downscaled, a new node was automatically scaled up, ensuring that the AI agent was up. I was able to check the logs and correct the issues accurately thanks to that high availability. Also, AWS support is very helpful; whenever I face issues regarding costing or anything else, I just create a ticket and they assist me in resolving the issues.

Amazon EKS has positively impacted my organization by improving the efficiency and working capacity of my team. It improved efficiency and working capacity because, based on how Amazon EKS works, we are more calm regarding functionality. The reliability allows us to focus on many other tasks, as the infrastructure is maintained by Amazon EKS; therefore, we can divert our attention to other tasks and perform well there as well.

Functionality-wise, Amazon EKS is acceptable, but navigation-wise, it could be improved in the AWS console; it could be more interactive and more intuitive for new users. Also, the pricing can be reviewed as it is sometimes a bit pricey, particularly regarding the extended support when new version upgrades occur that we cannot implement directly due to production workloads, as clusters running on extended support cost six times more, which is something that could be reduced.

I believe documentation could be improved on the AWS website so a new user who is starting with Amazon EKS could work much better with it.

I have been working in my current field for three years.

In my experience, Amazon EKS is stable.

The scalability of Amazon EKS is good.

The customer support of Amazon EKS is good. I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as a seven.

Positive

I have seen a return on investment because the reliability has helped me save time; I can rely on Amazon EKS's reliability and then divert my attention to other tasks, so it has definitely saved my time. I estimate that my team and I save roughly one to one and a half hours a day since using Amazon EKS.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the pricing for the cluster part is a bit higher; the setup cost is acceptable, but the licensing part regarding extended support is also a bit pricey, which I think can be handled or reduced.

Amazon EKS is a good product; if you are starting with Kubernetes, it is a good choice, but the pricing is a bit substantial, so you should review that. Also, regarding the support, there are sometimes cases where you need to upgrade your AWS plans for particular support, which can also be a bit pricey. I would rate this product a seven overall.

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As integrators, we are the user of Amazon EKS. Our customer's main use cases for Amazon EKS are mostly internal services automation and development and deployment automation, which we are using for the digital applications of our customers in the AWS cloud.

The most valuable features in Amazon EKS include a suite of different services, such as code versioning, pipelining, code deployment, and code quality checks; we are using the total suite of the Amazon EKS.

From a project management standpoint, the automated node provisioning feature in Amazon EKS helps to streamline the application deployment process because the benefit I see with this product is that our deployment turnaround time reduces considerably, and all compliance standards are met. Code quality is maintained, and there are specific indicators designed in the product to identify quality issues with minimal effort. The Agile mode of project execution methodologies can also be implemented due to the code version controls and pipelining controls.

Most importantly, the deployment side of code releases and release management features are maintained without major hassles, within a short span of time, and without delays to customer experience. From both operational management and project management angles, these tools address human as well as programming side hurdles, eliminating most gaps and enabling timely project execution without surprises and ensuring quick turnaround time while meeting delivery deadlines.

Amazon EKS's deep integration with AWS services such as Identity Access Management impacts the approach to security and compliance because it integrates with IAM authentication and the multi-factor authentication process, allowing access only to those who need it.

I recommend that Amazon EKS could be improved by integrating AI intelligence with its components because EKS or the Kubernetes cluster has not yet undergone an AI wrapper. An AI component integrated into Amazon EKS, such as failure analysis and intelligent recommendations when failures happen, would be very helpful. Although automation is present, this AI feature would enhance the overall capability.

I have been working with Amazon EKS for almost four or five years now.

I have not faced any challenges with Amazon EKS; it's good and quicker. Initially, implementation can be a bit time-consuming, but once set, it becomes a 'code it and forget it' sort of environment.

I have no complaints about the stability of Amazon EKS; it is good, with no concerns at this point in time.

Amazon EKS is good regarding scalability; it suits conventional services and has room for improvement with upcoming agentic AI and GenAI resources.

My experience with Amazon support is good; we always had a good association with them, so no concerns on that. I would rate the support of Amazon EKS above seven.

Positive

Customers have seen a return on investment with Amazon EKS because they are happy and see value in the services; however, as the volume grows, the OpEx cost also increases, so any respite on OpEx cost for customers with exponentially growing volumes would be helpful.

Regarding the cost of Amazon EKS, I would say it's relative to the organization based on release management processes; for big organizations where customer experience matters, such as in the retail segment, the cost can be very high due to numerous daily changes. For companies in telecom and retail, as Amazon is a pay-per-use service, our usage levels are high, so I would desire if Amazon could provide certain discounts or credits for customers who utilize a lot of resources.

Our customers use the solution on the Amazon AWS cloud. They purchase Amazon EKS through AWS only.

For those looking into using Amazon EKS, my advice is that it is a good product, although the downside is that if the volume grows, the OpEx cost increases significantly. I would strongly recommend it for small and medium companies. For big companies with more releases, it also attracts more OpEx costs, so if there is a mechanism to control costs, it can be suitable for everybody.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)