Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Inner workings of Amazon EKS (CON327)

Summary

• Speakers: Vipin Mohan (Principal Product Manager) and Vipul Sabaya (Senior Software Development Manager) from the Amazon EKS team.
• Kubernetes Management: Amazon EKS simplifies Kubernetes management, allowing users to focus on delivering value rather than managing infrastructure.
• Amazon EKS Overview: EKS runs Vanilla Kubernetes, is upstream conformance certified, and supports up to six versions of Kubernetes.
• Why EKS: EKS addresses challenges like scalability, security risks, complexity, and operational overhead associated with running Kubernetes at scale.
• Use Cases: EKS is used across industries for legacy app modernization, AI/ML, data processing, backend services, IoT, and web applications.
• EKS Variants: EKS is available for local zones, AWS Wavelength, AWS Outposts, and as EKS Anywhere for on-premises environments.
• Global Reach: EKS is available in 30 commercial regions, including new regions like Zurich, Hyderabad, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, and Spain.
• Kubernetes Upgrades: EKS provides consistency in version support, extended support for versions, pre-flight checks for upgrades, and is engaged in discussions around long-term support (LTS).
• EKS Architecture: The control plane is fully managed, zonally redundant, and integrated with AWS services and open-source software.
• Resiliency and Scalability: EKS has built-in mechanisms for zonal redundancy, automatic scaling, and resiliency to data center incidents.
• etcd Management: EKS manages etcd, a key component of Kubernetes, ensuring high availability and consistency.
• Release Process: EKS has a robust release process with testing at multiple stages, progressive deployments, and rollback capabilities.
• Best Practices: EKS provides best practices for monitoring, preventing 429s, building well-behaved clients, understanding limits, and garbage collection.
• Community Engagement: EKS contributes to the Kubernetes community, including migrating the upstream registry to AWS, participating in the LTS working group, and supporting community testing with AWS credits.

Insights

• Extended Support: EKS's extended support for Kubernetes versions up to 26 months is a significant benefit for customers who need longer support cycles for their applications.
• Operational Overhead Reduction: EKS's managed service model offloads significant operational overhead from customers, allowing them to focus on application development and deployment.
• Scalability and Resiliency: EKS's architecture is designed for high scalability and resiliency, with features like zonal redundancy and automatic scaling of the control plane and etcd.
• Community Involvement: AWS's active involvement in the Kubernetes community, including leadership roles in working groups and contributions to the security committee, demonstrates a commitment to the open-source ecosystem and the continuous improvement of EKS.
• Future Investments: AWS's focus on add-on operational software management, cluster telemetry, observability, and open-ended templates indicates a direction towards providing more customizable and insightful Kubernetes management solutions.
• Feedback-Driven Development: The emphasis on the public roadmap and working backwards from customer feedback highlights AWS's customer-centric approach to product development and feature prioritization for EKS.