K8s vanilla vs EKS on AWS

General Discussions
1

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Cluster information:

Kubernetes version: N/a
Cloud being used: AWS
Installation method: Packer / Terraform
Host OS: Ubuntu 1804
CNI and version: N/a
CRI and version: N/a

Hi All,

Ultra-noob question here. I’m hoping I can probe your experience for some good advice on running K8s in the cloud - specifically, on AWS. I would prefer to run vanilla K8s (instead of EKS) in AWS to maintain the ability to be cloud agnostic should we decide to leverage other cloud providers. Are there any compelling reasons for running EKS in AWS or is K8s perfectly acceptable in comparison to run in the AWS cloud platform?

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I think running kubernetes on AWS with kops is way better than EKS.

EKS is not a great service (you need to handle the node updates yourself with plenty of tricky code, etc.) and, while is getting better, it doesn’t seem AWS is putting too much effort.

If you run it with kops, though, you will have to manage the cluster yourself. But I think it’s a trade off and totally reasonable.

It is, of course, a very personal opinion :slight_smile:

3

EKS manages your kubernetes control plane interms of HA en all. If you know how to run and maintain controller plan then having a separate cluster is always better.