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Amazon EKS vs Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] comparison

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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
97
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

"The value of Amazon EKS for us is due to our microservice-level architecture, where we need to automate and have a fast, scalable application, allowing us to directly configure the Amazon EKS cluster in the application, which will make it very easy to run our application smoothly and scalably."
"Amazon EKS is a major tool for our application functionality and job purposes; it helps us at the orchestration level, allowing us to not worry about the entire deployment and service migration."
"My favorite feature of Amazon EKS is the ecosystem that it provides, including the integration with S3, along with EBS, and the networking that is smooth to run Kubernetes."
"Application deployment is more automatic."
"By integrating AWS IAM roles with Amazon EKS service accounts, we can leverage other services from Amazon EKS such as S3, Secrets Manager, or EC2, and the concept of IRSA helps us integrate with external services of the Amazon EKS cluster easily."
"I can recommend using it to save costs and for faster deployment, better performance, security, and easy clustering."
"The scalability has really helped us a lot in enhancing the customer experience and ensuring quick results."
"This way, previously manual tasks can be automated, which is a significant improvement."
"Nutanix's support is really good."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase."
"Nutanix is very stable and reliable, based on my experience with many customers, including large banks and telcos."
"The technical support is excellent."
"We can do a lot of provisioning."
"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."
"Karbon is embedded in the hypervisor, there are no deployment costs and the administration is via Prism Central."
 

Cons

"We have had network connectivity issues twice. We weren't able to figure out what went wrong there, and it caused a problem initially."
"The overall stability of the product should be improved to prevent any loss of data."
"I believe only operational management could be improved in the next releases of Amazon EKS."
"Microsoft Azure offers more simplicity while doing complex deployments. AWS offers the same solutions; however, it seems more complicated when it comes to independent resources, where you need to establish dependencies before doing the actual resource deployment."
"The main area of improvement is that a cluster is required on-premises, which takes a lot of time."
"We encountered challenges with WebSocket integration when implementing chat functionality on Amazon EKS."
"I think the monitoring part and observability part could be improved."
"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."
"Nutanix has limitations compared to VMware, particularly in testing and industry tie-ups with different OEMs. Deploying virtual machines, especially for industrial automation, can be challenging due to compatibility issues."
"GUI lacks sufficient information to help with understanding the installation and process."
"It's mostly for lab purposes; we haven't seen a lot of traction in the market from enterprise customers yet."
"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."
"NKE could benefit from additional features that support more advanced Kubernetes functionalities and configurations."
"The product lacks some virtualization capabilities, making it an area for improvement where the solution can focus on providing users with more virtualization capabilities related to disk systems."
"I would like to have more nodes for availability and storage."
"There have been cases where we've deployed with Karbon and haven't seen that it includes errors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloud based pay-as-you-go pricing"
"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."
"The product pricing depends on the specific requirements."
"The solution is pricey. The tool's pricing is monthly."
"Amazon EKS is expensive."
"The price could be cheaper. I would rate it as seven out of ten."
"I rate Amazon EKS’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"The solution is cheaper than one of its competitors."
"I rate NKE's pricing a six out of ten."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"While deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix is cost-effective, there may be additional costs for remote branch offices where Kubernetes is less common."
"The platform is averagely priced. I rate the pricing as four out of ten."
"The product's licenses are included in the software version deployed in our data center."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
When purchasing Amazon EKS service for my application, if I have only one or two pods, I need to pay 75 dollars per month for that control plane regardless of what I am hosting, which can be challe...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
In a minor enhancement sense, I just needed some documentation on that, which has already been provided, but in simple English language that is easy to understand for freshers as well. I also neede...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EKS?
Let me provide some additional context. Jenkins is one tool to consider. AWS DevOps is also available. For monitoring, Grafana and Prometheus are options. There are also some open-source tools that...
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat, Kubernetes and others in Container Management. Updated: August 2026.
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