Amazon EKS Reviews

I have been working in my current field since I work in the cloud, and I worked for AWS and for Amazon EKS because all of my customers are using Amazon EKS or application container solutions.

My use cases for Amazon EKS involve working for an AWS partner, one of the biggest in LATAM, where we have many customers or clients around the world with different solutions. I have a client that had many applications in Amazon EKS, and I had the full administration of the cluster. I manage not only networking, pods, or resources but also security, monitoring, the billing for the expenses, access to the cluster, and to the AWS account. I think that is a big field that I can handle within Amazon EKS.

What I appreciate most about Amazon EKS is that I use tools such as Datadog for monitoring and reporting, and if I have a problem with the cost, I use Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, as this Prometheus package is cheaper than Datadog. I use Helm to install packages or applications, making it easier and secure to install, uninstall, or update them. I also use Argo CD for CI/CD workflows. In general, these are the main package solutions that I use for Amazon EKS.

Regarding the downsides of Amazon EKS, I remember a case where I used a network add-on different from what is provided by AWS because the pods request one IP address for each pod. The solution had many pods, and the blocks in the VPC were limited. I didn't have enough addresses to assign to the pods, and I had to change the add-on to handle the IP address using another third-party solution not from AWS. This was one of the first challenges I encountered with Amazon EKS.

Since then, AWS still hasn't fixed this issue or given me an opportunity to use the IPs that I needed.

Basically, the problem was that we did not have enough IP addresses for the pods, and we had to change the network add-on in Amazon EKS.

I have been using Amazon EKS in my career for three and a half years since I worked in the cloud.

It took me approximately one month to learn how to use Amazon EKS. The tricky part was implementing Amazon EKS cluster completely from Terraform, as creating all of the resources is challenging. If you create the cluster from the AWS console, many resources are created behind the scenes, but in Terraform, you must create each resource one by one, which was quite difficult. Overall, it took about one month.

Regarding stability, I have not experienced any lagging, crashing, downtime, or instability with Amazon EKS. I think that Amazon EKS, and Kubernetes in general, is stable. I have had problems with billing because it's expensive, but not with stability.

When it comes to scalability, I use Carpenter with Amazon EKS because it is a tool that offers significant granularity for configuration, and it works really well and fast. The inherent scalability of Kubernetes is not the best for me based on resources, but Carpenter works really nicely.

I have contacted the technical support of Amazon EKS when I had issues with the IP addresses, and they helped me solve it by installing another network add-on. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give the support of Amazon EKS a nine because it was nice and fast.

Positive

I have used a direct alternative to Amazon EKS, which is ECS in AWS. I have many clients using ECS, Elastic Container Service, which is the native service for containers in AWS. It's not the same as Amazon EKS; it's another orchestrator, but it works fine when your application is not big.

The initial deployment with Amazon EKS was easy, but I remember that my first deployment was done with a YAML file, just using kubectl. I used kubectl run and the YAML file, and after that, I learned about Argo CD, which made the process much easier.

Amazon EKS does require maintenance on my end. Last year, Kubernetes had many updates, which was a difficult task. This is why I use Helm to install all of the applications in the cluster. If the application is built for you, you can create the Helm chart for this application and install it using this tool. I think that is the best option when you need to update the cluster. I know that AWS now offers many new applications add-ons included in the console, making it easier, but I still think that maintenance is one of the most complicated aspects of the cluster.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Amazon EKS a nine.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We are going to be using Lambda on the AWS Stack. We are migrating all our on-premises applications to AWS.

Eggplant is going to be on the AWS platform soon. We are using Lambda functions and CloudWatch for monitoring. We are also using Elasticsearch and ELK.

After we move all the applications to the cloud, we're going to move them into Amazon EKS as containers for easy management. It would be the same as how we are using EC2 instances, but in this case, we're going to move all applications to run on containers, Amazon EKS containers.

We use it for common file sharing across applications. I'm not really sure about all aspects as I didn't use it much. We just set it up to make sure all applications can read. The main capability is allowing different applications to access the same file or resources at the same time, providing collaboration capabilities.

The whole platform is easy because once you set it up, it's easy to onboard applications. It's easy to troubleshoot, run multiple clustering, log management, and perform troubleshooting. You can also install other applications, third-party applications, integration, and all that.

It helps with having dedicated nodes for certain functions. If you want to segregate the work instead of using all the nodes, you're able to align and assign which node processes specific applications, jobs, pods, or runs certain pods.

It reduces the deployment time, setup time, configuration time, and is cost-effective. It's very highly scalable.

The main challenge is at the beginning when you're still learning how to set up. The initial setup and knowing how to do it the first time can be challenging.

We had some challenges with the network pods. There were several pods that we had to try plugins for network, and the load balancing for the application we were deploying was quite difficult to manage.

The documentation should be easier to understand for beginners. It needs to be straightforward and easily grouped together because information tends to be scattered.

Some features required a lot of command line changes, especially setting up ingress and load balancers. If there could be a way to do that on a GUI, that would be easier. Having more configuration options on the UI, especially for setting up load balancers and ingress controllers, would be beneficial.

We have been using the solution for three months.

Currently, we haven't really automated the deployment. We are using Jenkins for our work.

Microsoft tools are being used in the bank.

We haven't experienced any scalability issues.

The support is quite friendly and very helpful. The Amazon support is very helpful and very responsive.

Positive

The main challenge is at the beginning when you're still learning how to set up. The setup and knowing how to do it the first time can be challenging.

I can recommend using it to save costs and for faster deployment, better performance, security, and easy clustering. It's easy to set up, manage, and monitor because when it goes down, it's easy to identify issues. Troubleshooting is straightforward, unlike other applications where you have to do a lot of digging to find the root cause. With this solution, you can see problems directly on your dashboards.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I am an end user of Amazon EKS. As a software engineer, we are using Amazon EKS as a platform for deploying our applications.

The most valuable features of Amazon EKS that I have found include scalability, simplicity in operations and management, and some great features for optimizing cost. Those are probably the main advantages.

Speaking about scalability, it basically means that we are able to scale our workloads according to our needs, which is useful. Regarding cost optimization, sometimes infrastructure in AWS might be a little bit expensive, so having some functionality to get it more manageable and to have some cost reduction solutions in place is always useful. Additionally, not only Amazon EKS but the Kubernetes platform itself is a very popular platform, and many developers are familiar with it, making it convenient for the company to use. It is much easier for our developers to get any information about solving problems and developing applications because information is widely available.

I have seen a positive impact from Amazon EKS for my organization since deployment; it provides a very robust and cost-effective platform for deploying our applications. The Kubernetes platform is well known and widely available, which means there is a lot of information about it. Since it is a manageable solution, it removes a lot of the burden and headache of managing our own cluster on bare-bone hardware. While we do not rely heavily on Amazon infrastructure, I understand that if someone were to rely on it heavily, it would be much easier to integrate with Amazon EKS.

In my opinion, Amazon EKS could improve its plugin management; while Amazon offers some improvements, they often come at an extra cost. Compared to Google, for example, having the same cluster in Google Cloud is much easier because it hides all the complexity of managing Kubernetes add-ons and plugins. EKS is improving in this area, but it could still be smoother and better. Upgrade management is also a constant concern because EKS frequently forces users to upgrade, which can be inconvenient due to the risks involved in introducing something new, especially at the platform level.

I have been working with Amazon EKS for probably two or three years.

It is hard to say how Amazon EKS's self-healing nodes help me minimize administrative burdens since we have not had any issues with them in a Kubernetes environment. The Kubernetes platform provides capabilities to replace nodes, and everything just goes smoothly under the hood.

We do not use Amazon EKS's automated patching feature for our Kubernetes clusters.

Amazon EKS's support for AWS tools integration has not influenced my application development and management process much; we do not rely on any specific AWS features.

I do not often communicate with Amazon EKS technical support and customer service.

I have reached out to Amazon EKS support a few times in my previous project where we had a subscription plan for support, but in the current project, we have no business support.

My impression of Amazon EKS support is generally positive; my experience depends on the person on the other side, but the vast majority of cases involved very professional and skilled engineers. However, there was one instance where I was not completely satisfied with the answers received. Overall, I would rate them eight out of ten.

Positive

Before Amazon EKS, we used a different solution, specifically ECS and Elastic Container Service, and we still use it alongside offerings from other cloud vendors such as Google, as well as self-hosted clusters.

I personally participated in the initial setup and deployment of Amazon EKS. The setup process for Amazon EKS is fully automated, as we use Terraform for bootstrapping and managing our infrastructure, so there are no issues at all. Everything was straightforward with no challenges. The only thing I can remember, which is relevant for the previous question, is that when creating a Kubernetes cluster in the AWS web console, it does some changes under the hood, such as creating a default role for authentication. However, doing it through command line tools or automation with Terraform requires some manual steps, which is not very convenient.

I would like to optimize the Amazon EKS setup process in the future, but we probably will not take action because creating a new cluster is a rare task for us. Spending an extra 15 minutes on manual steps probably would not be worth the effort of full automation.

I do not have any metrics to measure the impact of Amazon EKS on my organization's ability to manage complex workflows efficiently.

I am aware of the pricing of Amazon EKS. I do not consider Amazon EKS an affordable solution; it is not cheap for sure, but it depends. For a small project, such as a personal project or a proof of concept, the cost is fairly noticeable. However, for a full production setup, I think the cost is manageable.

The main advantage for us in choosing Amazon EKS is the AWS infrastructure and the cloud ecosystem, including databases and compute instances, which is probably even more important than Amazon EKS itself.

I have not utilized Amazon EKS's integration with IAM.

I do not really integrate Amazon EKS with other AWS services; our current application would work with any Kubernetes platform, whether it is Amazon EKS, Google Cloud, or any other self-hosted Kubernetes cluster, most likely with some minor tweaks.

We do not use any specific Amazon EKS APIs or functionality, so I do not have anything to share about integration capabilities.

My personal rating for Amazon EKS is six out of ten, as it really depends on personal preference.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I use Amazon EKS for creating users, depending on the project I've worked on. I use it to update config maps and for role binding in the Kubernetes cluster. Additionally, I use it for creating namespaces and accessing different clusters, such as dev clusters.

Regarding integration with IAM in Amazon EKS, I use it primarily for creating IAM users and managing permissions for users.

While I cannot specify a single favorite feature in Amazon EKS, I particularly value the user creation and config map functionalities. Both processes are straightforward - creating users and updating the config map are easy tasks.

The main benefit of using Amazon EKS is that it makes work more efficient and enables faster delivery.

The main area for improvement in Amazon EKS relates to master node control. When setting up a Kubernetes cluster independently, you have access to the master, but with AWS, you do not have control over it.

The support team of Amazon EKS is excellent and very helpful. I have never experienced any issues with them.

Positive

We briefly used Google's solution before switching to Amazon EKS. After that brief period, we have exclusively used AWS.

For the initial setup of Amazon EKS, we typically follow established guidelines. In most cases, we are not responsible for creating it directly. We work through our Jira and Confluence systems, completing assigned tickets and projects rather than setting up the system from scratch.

The pricing of Amazon EKS varies depending on the size and specific requirements of individual companies or clients. Many companies choose AWS because of its competitive pricing. The prices are considered fair by most users.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Amazon EKS a 9.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We are currently using Amazon EKS as a production environment where we deploy multiple services because we serve banks using our services for identifying threat analysis and synthetic identity. Our main use case for Amazon EKS involves deploying our services based on scoring to determine whether a particular user is valid or invalid based on their social security number and any fraudulent entity they provide. We analyze this information and use Amazon EKS as the platform for deploying that application. We mainly deploy applications using Kubernetes deployments, and based on that, we deploy pods which contain the container that runs the application.

Amazon EKS helps us manage these deployments for threat analysis and synthetic identity because the controller part is managed by AWS. This addresses our concern about managing it ourselves, as we are managing a large environment where Amazon EKS ensures we can confidently manage our application rather than relying solely on the controller. We have implemented Karpenter, which manages the nodes and continuously monitors to see if any nodes or pods are underutilized or unable to load. It identifies the requirements from the pod side, automatically creates a node, and schedules the pod based on its resource needs. This automation allows us to respond quickly, especially during high load times when pods may get stuck or unable to upload images. The alerts help us react promptly, and another pod will be scheduled to fulfill the user's request within seconds.

The best feature Amazon EKS offers is automation, particularly with the automatic scheduling of pods on nodes. Karpenter, the new feature added recently that manages the node initialization, is something I really appreciate as it makes independent decisions based on the requirements, unlike older autoscaling configurations. Karpenter prioritizes cost-effectiveness by selecting the cheapest options for nodes, whether they are spot instances or on-demand. Additionally, whenever there is an issue, the pod can be automatically recreated using the defined replica set, providing a significant advantage of Kubernetes.

Karpenter helps keep costs down by consistently evaluating whether it should take on-demand instances or lower-cost alternatives. It constantly monitors for the lowest price model available in AWS. However, because the cheapest instance can be terminated with little notice, Karpenter quickly transitions to the next available on-demand instance. This proactive cost management is a key feature.

Amazon EKS has positively impacted my organization as Kubernetes offers orchestration of container-based applications, allowing us to rapidly deploy and fulfill user requests. During busy business days or promotional offers, we experience increased traffic, and Amazon EKS enables quick deployment of containers to meet this demand. If a pod is unresponsive, Amazon EKS can easily launch another pod to maintain service delivery. This adaptability not only enhances user service but also contributes to cost savings since we leverage Karpenter to manage nodes dynamically based on usage.

Since I joined this company ten months ago, we have reduced the number of failures significantly. Earlier, before using Karpenter, issues with pods hindered our efficiency and resulted in higher costs, as we did not have the option to minimize expenses effectively. Now, with Karpenter, costs have decreased and our efficiency has improved because we can swiftly address alerts and redeploy applications without delay. This transition has greatly improved our operational performance.

After adding Karpenter to our Amazon EKS setup, we have seen efficiency improvements of approximately thirty to forty percent, along with a reduction in our costs and a decrease in the number of issues our team encounters.

In my experience with Amazon EKS, I have not encountered aspects that require improvement, as AWS has invested intelligently in its development, especially with the addition of Karpenter. I do not have any particular improvement feedback for Amazon EKS or Kubernetes at this time.

I have been working in my current field for the last ten months. In terms of my total experience, I have been using Amazon EKS for the last three years, and in my current company, I have been using it for the last ten months.

Amazon EKS is stable in my experience.

Customer support for Amazon EKS is excellent, particularly at the enterprise level, as we can readily raise tickets and receive prompt responses. This interactive support is incredibly useful, allowing for quick resolutions and solutions through live sessions and screen sharing.

Positive

I have been using Amazon EKS since I started. Although I know about Docker Swarm, it poses issues for large environments like ours, which is why we opted for Amazon EKS.

We evaluated Docker Swarm before choosing Amazon EKS, as it is not well-suited for expanded environments and long-term deployments, making Amazon EKS the clear choice based on insights from my seniors.

I have experienced a return on investment with Amazon EKS. Since implementing Karpenter, costs have been reduced and operational efficiency has increased. We can deploy applications swiftly, and our monitoring tools such as DataDog alert us to any pod issues so we can act quickly. This responsiveness enables us to focus on critical issues that require our immediate attention.

I appreciate the overall pricing model of AWS, where you pay based on usage, which allows for a clear understanding of costs associated with services. The setup cost is reduced significantly since Amazon EKS simplifies the laborious process of arranging the controller plane, which typically requires substantial human resources and effort. Licensing is straightforward, making it easy to start using the service.

I would certainly recommend using Amazon EKS due to its managed services, which alleviate the complexities of controlling the Kubernetes cluster. The scalability features ensure issues with any pods are managed effectively by automatic relaunch processes, maintaining desired states. Karpenter's cost-efficient design is another highlight worth noting for anyone looking to balance container orchestration with spending.

Amazon EKS has proven to be an exceptional product, particularly as it gains popularity due to its scalability and rapid application deployment capabilities, benefiting organizations across various sectors. This review has been rated nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I use Amazon EKS for managing production environments. I have worked for different companies over the past three years, managing microservice applications on Amazon EKS to deploy application code to the environment, including the production environment. We use DevOps methodology to deploy these services.

The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading. This allows me to focus on business code. If using services like Fargate, I only need to maintain my workload, simply uploading code that will be deployed to the Kubernetes cluster. This is especially beneficial for startup companies that lack the technical resources to manage the Kubernetes cluster. Furthermore, Amazon EKS allows me to utilize Kubernetes cluster-level expansion. If there’s insufficient resource on a machine, the cluster can automatically expand to add new nodes.

Although Amazon EKS is popular, there are areas for improvement. It could support more scenarios and plugins. Currently, some third-party plugins, like certain network plugins such as Weave CNI, might not be fully supported. 

I have been working with Amazon EKS for more than three years.

I haven't found any performance issues with Amazon EKS so far. To avoid potential performance issues, it is important to plan resources initially, ensuring there are enough compute resources like nodes to host applications.

Amazon EKS is very scalable, but scaling can sometimes cause trouble. When Amazon EKS scales up or down, there might be occasional intermediate pod interruptions, though it's rare.

I have escalated some questions to AWS tech support before. I once faced a random issue where a pod abruptly shut down and restarted. Upon escalation, AWS helped me find the root cause. Overall, I would rate AWS tech support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with Azure AKS and some exposure to Google GKE. However, I mostly have experience with Amazon EKS.

When I first set up Amazon EKS, I faced challenges because there are different setup methods. Using the console does not align well with DevOps. It is better to use EKS CTL or Terraform's IAC tools. Configuring role permission policies is the most challenging part, ensuring Amazon EKS has access to different services or databases.

I have experience with Azure AKS and some exposure to Google GKE.

I would recommend Amazon EKS for large companies, especially banks, due to AWS's extended support for Amazon EKS, its availability, and reliability. Amazon EKS offers a strong solution as part of a full suite, but it should be integrated with services like Lambda for a complete solution. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight because there is still room for improvement. The overall product rating is eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

For the usual use cases of Amazon EKS, we have been running different kinds of servers, such as web pages, and we have also used it to provide the SaaS solution for the end customer, delivering software as a service to the end customers. Basically, I deal with apps, SaaS applications, and websites.

We don't use Amazon EKS internally for us; we usually provide the service to others for their solutions.

The most valuable capability of Amazon EKS is managing the management portion of Kubernetes, which is the best thing that we get from Amazon EKS. Even though we have to upgrade it every six to seven months, it provides all the things required for us, so if a person knows how to install it and make use of it, that's all that's needed for using Amazon EKS.

Regarding self-healing nodes of EKS in minimizing administrative burdens for my customers, I appreciate that this feature allows nodes to try to heal themselves, which is a good feature. However, I haven't used this feature often, but having the service's ability to find and heal themselves or replicate is a good option for Amazon EKS to maintain high infrastructure uptime.

The area of Amazon EKS that could be improved is the development cycles because every six months a new version of Kubernetes is launched. Working in the infrastructure, I have found it quite difficult to keep up with infrastructure updates and new versions. Migrating the whole infrastructure from one Amazon EKS cluster to another is quite cumbersome, so if possible, version management should be made much easier than it is now, perhaps with some option to deploy code using blue-green updates. Creating a clone of the current infrastructure, updating it to the latest version, and terminating the old infrastructure would be a great enhancement.

I haven't used Amazon EKS's automated patching feature, but I believe it involves directly upgrading the AMI versions remotely or from the Amazon EKS dashboard. I understand it is a good feature, but I haven't used it yet.

I have been working with Amazon EKS for seven years in Kubernetes only, and I would say four years in Amazon EKS specifically.

My experience with the deployment and initial setup of Amazon EKS is usually straightforward. If you have the right Terraform code or the right knowledge, you can create it from the console or using Terraform or other tools; I don't find difficulties in starting a Kubernetes cluster. However, using the right principles or tools together with Amazon EKS may be challenging.

In terms of stability, Amazon EKS is pretty good. I don't encounter issues with stability if I use the right methods of deployment. For instance, using spot instances that are inexpensive can lead to downtime if not managed correctly.

My experience with customer service and technical support of AWS for Amazon EKS has been generally positive. Earlier, I was in developer support where the response time was maybe three to four hours after ticket submission, but I was able to resolve most problems with their support. I don't have any complaints.

I would rate technical support for Amazon EKS at an eight out of ten based on my experience with the developer support.

Positive

I have been using Amazon EKS for four years. In addition, I have used other solutions.

The integration of Amazon EKS with IAM is easy; if you have the right policy in place, you can create a role from the policy and then apply it to the application that you are using. It provides a way to use IAM to provision the software and infrastructure portions, as well as integrating application users into AWS IAM, making it very easy to implement if you know how to do it.

The influence of EKS's integration with other AWS tools on application development and management processes is significant; EKS itself is just the infrastructure. Application development requires the right tools with Amazon EKS, as it only provides a place to deploy things, and not the entire development cycle or management of workstations and servers. You must use something on top of Amazon EKS to fulfill the development cycle or CI/CD pipeline. Once the CI/CD pipeline is developed with Amazon EKS as the deployment platform, it becomes easy for developers to develop and test applications in the cluster.

I am not exactly sure about the pricing of Amazon EKS, but I think it is priced at the instance level, meaning EKS itself is not that high in price. However, whatever instances are used for Amazon EKS will determine the actual costs, particularly the traffic coming into the cluster.

Currently, I am not working with any software other than Amazon EKS, but we have plans to utilize some other applications, not just Amazon EKS, involving other services of AWS.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We use Amazon EKS mostly for deploying production workloads, and there are multiple AI models that we run on Amazon EKS.

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.

I have experience with Azure, and in comparison to Azure, a downside of Amazon EKS is that even if you want to deploy a dev workload or do some experimentation, we have to pay the charges for the control panel with no free option.

Additionally, I have faced many issues while configuring the node groups and the whole configurations; bringing up the nodes was a bit hectic, and I was not able to determine which node was failing and for what reason.

Specifically, the pricing for the control panel of Amazon EKS is hefty, and there is no cost-cutting that can be done on that side.

I have been using Amazon EKS in my career for four years overall.

Amazon EKS is pretty stable, and I have not seen any lagging, crashing, or downtime.

Amazon EKS is good in terms of scaling.

I have contacted technical support and customer support for Amazon EKS.

Positive

I have used Azure EKS, Civo, and also experimented with GCP as alternatives to Amazon EKS. If I have to rank between all three of them, GCP comes at number one, Amazon EKS comes at number two, and Azure EKS service comes at number three.

On the costing part of Kubernetes, Azure is beating Amazon EKS since I can do some experimentation without paying for the control panel; I can just pay for the node groups, which is an area where Amazon can improve.

From my point of view, the initial deployment of Amazon EKS is difficult.

I had to configure many components, such as IAM policies and other things; it was not a simple click-through process. The major issue is that there is no single point where I can see all the logs; while there is CloudWatch, it is not easily accessible, and you have to go through a hectic process to search and find information. There is nothing where you can go and click to get all the logs in a single place.

Amazon EKS requires maintenance on my end to continue functioning; we have to do upgradation from time to time since every Kubernetes version is only valid for one year.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS a seven out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)