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Amazon EKS vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EKS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (1st), Container Security (12th)
Nutanix Kubernetes Engine N...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Mahesh Dash - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Consultant at US Contract | Freelancer
Has enabled seamless infrastructure configuration while improving identity integration and monitoring capabilities
It has been since 2019 that I started using Amazon EKS. At that time, it was completely new, and many people were not using it just yet; it started from version 1.21, and right now we are on 1.33. Recently, 1.34 has been launched, but it's not yet available in the service catalog; we can see only 1.33. A lot of improvements have been made. We had numerous add-ons to install manually because Kubernetes is a completely different service than AWS cloud provider, and everyone has opted to use it. After opting, there is an identity that you have to maintain—one at Kubernetes level and one at the AWS provider level. You have to maintain one identity at IAM level and one within the cluster, Amazon EKS. A few things do not make sense within the add-ons, many of the secret providers that read the secret from Secrets Manager and then mount it as a volume. We use a service called EBS CSI driver, which reads the secrets or sensitive data from Secrets Manager and then mounts it as a volume to the pod at runtime. However, that doesn't have a dynamic feature where, if any changes happen in the secrets, it can read and populate in the environment. Sometimes consider your RDS password or OpenSearch password rotates. Amazon EKS doesn't have that feature to read the dynamic one and consider that the password has changed overnight; there is no functionality from the provider to see the changes and then restart the pod or fetch the new value. This often leads to downtime of 12 or even 6 hours, depending on when you realize it, so that needs improvement. Nonetheless, mostly on the add-on side, they have developed a lot; earlier we were installing them manually, but now with EKS auto mode, many things VPC CLI and pod identity service—around four plugins—are installed by default, which is a good thing. However, I believe there should be some solution that is self-contained, covering generic use cases. With the 1.33 release, they have addressed most of my earlier concerns, but I am still looking for some improvements, particularly in CloudWatch monitoring. In IT, we manage two aspects: either the system or the application. Currently, the application logs and monitoring are not very robust in CloudWatch; you can only find things if you are familiar with them. Fortunately, we are familiar, as most of the monitoring involves two types of databases: one is a time series for monitoring data, and the other is an indexing solution for a streaming service. This means we need to get the logs from each node, index them, and populate them on a screen. That part remains a separate service, but if they managed it within Amazon EKS service, where the monitoring is consolidated in one place, you wouldn't need to rely on Prometheus, Grafana, or different services. It would be advantageous to have a consolidated platform for EKS, as Kubernetes is leveraged; monitoring and logging should also be integrated simply by enabling parameters or tags. This would create a self-contained platform where people can onboard and start using it. Currently, I still need to enable logging and monitoring among other things myself; that shouldn't be the case after six or seven years in the market. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate Amazon EKS tech support an eight. Some individuals have a deep understanding of the services and can identify potential bottlenecks, especially with load balancer endpoints and certificate management. The shift from NGINX to AWS load balancers has diminished many previous issues. However, not every support engineer meets the same level of expertise, hence why I rate it a solid eight, which I consider decent.
reviewer2741271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nutanix Administrator at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has provided seamless upgrade experiences and robust technical support
I have heard there are many features added in NKP that are not available in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, such as load balancer features. The unified control plane feature is not being used in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE. We are currently using a third-party tool for load balancing, but going forward, NKP will include load balancer, ingress, and egress features, making infrastructure management much easier. There is no auto-scaling feature in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE; however, NKP offers it. In NKE, we created additional worker nodes and increased CPU and RAM capacity, but it required manual intervention. Concerning policy-driven governance in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, we have the ability to implement RBAC at the cluster level, which helps maintain security by not granting full admin privileges to every end user, thus restricting access effectively.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I can use the autoscaling feature to manage and scale up infrastructure."
"Break down your application into small modules to improve resiliency"
"EKS has security features that you can't find in competing solutions."
"Initial setup is straightforward. It only takes 15 minutes to deploy."
"Amazon EKS helps significantly with the development process because I can rest without worries about outages; if an outage occurs, Amazon EKS automatically replaces nodes, which helps with automation in the development lifecycle."
"I like its auto-scale feature very much."
"The most valuable feature is the computing speed."
"The most valuable features of Amazon EKS are its scalability features."
"We can do a lot of provisioning."
"The solution is embedded in the hypervisor and there are no deployment costs."
"My experience with Nutanix's technical support is excellent."
"The solution provides no downtime features. If we face issues, we create a new port, deploy it there, and then drop the existing one. This way, we avoid NKE downtime on our website."
"The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The platform is valuable due to its ease of use and quick deployment capabilities."
"Karbon is embedded in the hypervisor, there are no deployment costs and the administration is via Prism Central."
 

Cons

"I think if new features, especially AI capabilities, are developed for Amazon EKS, it will enhance the product as it allows us to continually improve our applications."
"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."
"The connectivity could be better."
"I would like to see it a little more stable, more operational, and more convenient to develop."
"We have problems with setting up virtual environments and installing the right packages. I believe the initial setup could be a better experience and faster customer support."
"When we set up the cluster, it appears as a huge infrastructure just for a small application."
"Improvement is needed in reducing the complexity of using EKS. While services like EC2 are user-friendly, EKS and ECS present a steep learning curve with significant responsibilities."
"I'm having difficulty getting my AWS clusters to communicate with my local machine."
"One major issue we faced was that appliances couldn't migrate from VMware to the tool. However, this seems to be a common problem across platforms. We've seen the same issue when migrating from VMware to RHV or other solutions. It's not specifically a Nutanix problem but rather an issue migrating appliances from one VM infrastructure to another. Some kernel-level and storage-level issues impact this process."
"In the next release, I would like to have automatic dynamic scaling, both upscaling and downscaling."
"Areas for improvement in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) include upgrading management capabilities and enhancing the user interface for improved usability."
"NKE could benefit from additional features that support more advanced Kubernetes functionalities and configurations."
"There have been cases where we've deployed with Karbon and haven't seen that it includes errors."
"There is no auto-scaling feature in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE; however, NKP offers it. In NKE, we created additional worker nodes and increased CPU and RAM capacity, but it required manual intervention."
"In the next release, I would like to have automatic dynamic scaling, both upscaling and downscaling."
"There have been challenges related to software bugs, especially regarding long-term licensing options and issues within our customer network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair enough and a little less costly."
"My company paid for the license."
"Amazon EKS is expensive."
"Amazon EKS is not a cheap solution."
"Amazon EKS is quite pricey, but the functionality it provides is worth it."
"The solution is more expensive than other competitors and does not require a license."
"Amazon EKS has fair pricing. It's better in terms of pricing than other platforms."
"I rate Amazon EKS’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"The platform is averagely priced. I rate the pricing as four out of ten."
"I rate NKE's pricing a six out of ten."
"The product's licenses are included in the software version deployed in our data center."
"While deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix is cost-effective, there may be additional costs for remote branch offices where Kubernetes is less common."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
Pricing for Amazon EKS is quite good, because you can choose the instances which are running under the hood. If you wanted to use smaller machine types, you can control your cost quite well. You ar...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
One limitation I have found with using Amazon EKS is that there is a very big learning curve. It is very complicated to use the tool. I have used Google's GKE which offers an easier framework becau...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EKS?
Overall, Amazon EKS is a very good tool to use and it is commonly used in the industry. However, GKE is easier to use and some of the management is abstracted away, which is not the case with Amazo...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
In terms of features, I cannot comment technically, but the real value is the consolidated out-of-the-box solution that Nutanix offers. Nutanix has built great branding and a lot of credibility and...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
I have experience with OpenShift, Kubernetes, and Nutanix, as we are one of the largest Nutanix resellers in the Middle East. We handle Kubernetes on the cloud as well, so we manage most of the Kub...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
I don't have a technical role, but we are a system integrator, so we sell solutions such as OpenShift and Kubernetes as part of the sales team. We are a reseller called eSky IT, and I serve as the ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
Nutanix Karbon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoDaddy, Pearson, FICO, Intuit, Verizon, Honeywell, Logicworks, RetailMeNot, LogMeIn, Conde Nast, mercari, Trainline, Axway
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
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