What is EKS? Simplifying Kubernetes Management on AWS (Part 2/3)

A World Where Kubernetes Meets the Cloud

Now Let’s assume you started a small website for sharing your favorite recipes. At first, everything is simple and there is low traffic, a few visitors a day, and a single server to handle it all. But then, word spreads, your site becomes popular, and before you know it, thousands of food enthusiasts are visiting daily. Suddenly, your once-simple setup begins to falter – pages load slowly, the server crashes under the traffic, and users start leaving.

This is the reality for many small websites experiencing rapid growth. What worked fine at the start becomes a nightmare to manage as traffic scales. You try adding more servers, but balancing the load across them manually is tedious and error-prone. Keeping everything running smoothly feels like juggling while riding a unicycle.

Enter Kubernetes – a tool that acts like your backstage manager, ensuring every server works together seamlessly, handling the traffic for you. But here’s the catch: Kubernetes itself needs expertise to set up, secure, and scale effectively. That’s where Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) steps in. For websites running on AWS, EKS takes the hard work out of managing Kubernetes, so you can focus on serving your users instead of fighting server issues.

Let’s dive into how EKS helps you handle explosive growth and why it’s the perfect solution for scaling your applications in the cloud.

What is Amazon EKS?

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that allows you to run Kubernetes on AWS without managing the Kubernetes control plane or underlying infrastructure. AWS handles the heavy lifting, so you can focus on deploying and managing your applications.

The Problem with Self-Managed Kubernetes

Running Kubernetes on your own can feel like opening Pandora's box:

1. Control Plane Complexity: Setting up the Kubernetes control plane involves configuring API servers, etcd, and scheduling components – a daunting task.
2. Security: You’re responsible for patching, upgrading, and securing your cluster against potential vulnerabilities.
3. Scalability: Managing high availability and scaling up or down based on workloads can be challenging.

How EKS Solves These Challenges

With Amazon EKS:

1. Managed Control Plane: AWS manages the control plane, including patching, upgrades, and scaling, freeing you from operational overhead.
2. High Availability: EKS ensures that your control plane is distributed across multiple AWS Availability Zones, providing fault tolerance and reliability.
3. Integrated AWS Services: EKS seamlessly integrates with AWS services like IAM, CloudWatch, and VPC, enhancing security and observability.
4. Scalability: You can use tools like the Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler to dynamically scale worker nodes.
5. Security: EKS supports advanced security features, including IAM roles for service accounts and encryption with AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

Why Kubernetes Users Love EKS

EKS is the perfect middle ground for teams who want the power of Kubernetes without the burden of managing its intricacies. Here’s why:

1. Ease of Use

EKS simplifies Kubernetes setup. With tools like eksctl or Terraform, you can spin up a production-ready cluster in minutes.

2. Focus on Applications, Not Infrastructure

By offloading cluster management tasks, EKS lets developers focus on deploying, scaling, and improving applications.

3. Built-In Security and Compliance

AWS provides compliance certifications and advanced security measures to protect your workloads.

 While EKS simplifies Kubernetes management, provisioning an EKS cluster can still involve multiple steps defining networking, IAM roles, and other configurations. This is where Terraform shines.

Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that automates resource creation. With Terraform, you can:

1. Define your EKS cluster, networking, and add-ons in reusable modules.
2. Version control your infrastructure configurations.
3. Apply consistent setups across environments (e.g., dev, staging, production).

Together, Terraform and EKS create a robust, scalable, and maintainable Kubernetes ecosystem.

Conclusion

Amazon EKS takes the complexity out of Kubernetes management, allowing teams to focus on what truly matters: building and delivering applications. Paired with Terraform, EKS offers an unbeatable combination for orchestrating scalable and secure workloads in the cloud. Whether you’re a Kubernetes newbie or a seasoned professional, EKS can elevate your cloud-native journey to new heights.

Ready to learn more? In my next article, I’ll guide you through setting up Terraform to create your first AWS EKS cluster. Stay tuned!

Written by Hans Chia, Software Engineer at adorsys.