Containerized applications are fantastic for accelerating development, lowering overhead, and building solutions that run on more than one platform (even the cloud) without having to rewrite them. Moreover, they guarantee excellent security thanks to their isolation capacities.
However, managing containerized applications presents a challenge. They need to be built and managed efficiently. Otherwise, the efforts wouldn’t be worth it. Kubernetes (K8s) does exactly this: assists in the management of containerized applications. As an open-source system, it allows a seamless scaling, management, and deployment of applications.
The costs of maintaining the service yourself can outweigh the savings. Therefore it makes sense to find a platform that provides Kubernetes as a managed service. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft offer their distinct platforms, but today we are discussing the former.
What Is Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)?
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) functions as a completely managed container service (no need for the self-maintenance of your infrastructure) where you can run, deploy, and scale applications in both the on-premises and the cloud.
Launched in June 2018, Amazon EKS was made available by relying on the open-source Kubernetes version. It was prepared with the shared responsibility principle in mind:
“AWS provides a Kubernetes control plane while AWS customers control their worker Nodes.”
It started off by offering a managed control plane for its EKS cluster which allowed the EC2 instances management for the application containers. Users were prompted to make use of the cluster orchestration platform. Later on, the service was developed to further assist with the deployment of auto-scaled EC2 nodes.
As a self-managed service, it doesn’t require you to deal with the development of scalability and availability for master nodes. This gives administrators more time to deal with workloads and the cluster. EKS automates not only the parallel processing and load distribution on the application workloads you’re running but in others too (including databases).
How to Use Amazon EKS?
Amazon EKS allows single points of failure that occur from running Kubernetes in other ways, utilizing the applications on various availability zones. Even if you are running Kubernetes applications elsewhere, they can be migrated into Amazon EKS with ease.
Since the project is open-source, numerous tools and plugins are built by developers who spotted issues in the process. However, when considering migrating an application, talking to AWS Certified Engineers is necessary.
Moving from-self managed Kubernetes to fully managed Amazon EKS can be done in four steps:
- Onboard on AWS Management Console and build an Amazon EKS cluster. (You can also use an AWS SDK or AWS CLI).
- Finish the deployment if workloads on AWS Fargate or launch Amazon EC2 nodes (either managed or self-managed)
- After the cluster is set up, start configuring K8s tools such as kubectl to interact with it.
- Keep managing and deploying workloads on the Amazon EKS cluster similarly to other Kubernetes environments, while monitoring the workloads through the Amazon Management Console.
The Benefits of EKS
Amazon EKS saves you the time and resources needed to install and maintain a Kubernetes control plane all on your own. All the applications can be managed through the Kubernetes Dashboard which allows changes to certain single resources as well.
Securing, scaling or managing, and learning to optimize Kubernetes on their own come with complications that have quite steep learning curve. Amazon EKS builds a cloud-native architecture in AWS with ease.
EKS works with internal/public classic and NLB annotations. This means that a number of tools such as ALB Ingress Controller and KIAM will advance the features of EKS by allowing pods to predict the IAM roles, and have the Kubernetes Load Balancer involve ALB as well.
Security and scalability remain two main features for your applications and EKS integrates seamlessly with other EKS services to help develop into these areas. Some of these services include: IAM for authentication, improved load balancing using the Elastic Load Balancing, and strengthened isolation with Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).
What Are Some Use Cases of Amazon EKS?
Deploy Across Hybrid Environments
Companies do keep a good part of their Kubernetes clusters in on-premises data centers and hybrid environments. Amazon EKS offers a unified toolset through Amazon EKS Anywhere which standardizes and operationalizes Kubernetes functionalities across environments.
Model Machine Learning (Ml) Workflows
Optimize Machine Learning Operations and workflows by integrating Amazon EKS with Sagemaker or by using it on its own. It allows you to quickly run training jobs with the recent EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and accelerates the deployment of inferences and training with the support of Kubeflow.
Build And Run Web Applications
Building scalable and secure applications is attainable with the use of multiple security and networking integrations and the diversity of Availability Zones (AZ) that prevent points of failure. Moreover, applications are available seamlessly in both the cloud and on-premises and under highly available configurations.
Final Thoughts
Kubernetes is fantastic for running secure and efficient containerized applications for your business. However, the stress and costs that come with the traditional path of self-managing the Kubernetes are exhausting. Therefore, Amazon EKS is the ideal solution to manage these applications and streamline their workflows.
At Blue Orange Digital, we have developed multiple data solutions for clients of different industries, from healthcare and marketing to real estate and supply chains. If you would prefer to have a virtual chat with our team, book a 15-minute call here for free.
