Kubernetes now stands in a dominating position for container orchestration. It makes the website flexible and scalable for use. After that, the website will not buffer under a high user load. Amazon is one of the popular cloud platforms. Its web service is called AWS. It offers business to IT infrastructure services in the web service form.
To do so, AWS cloud also uses Kubernetes service. This service is known as Elastic Kubernetes Service or EKS. This is the managed version of the Kubernetes service. Regular Kubernetes service can handle traditional websites. But as a cloud service, AWS has formed Kubernetes to be more flexible and scalable to run. That is why they call this ‘Elastic Kubernetes Service’.
In this article, we will talk about the EKS and EKS best practices. So, without any delay, let’s get the ball rolling.
What is EKS Service?
Kubernetes is a management platform for containerized apps. Amazon elastic Kubernetes service, or EKS, automatically scales and manages the infrastructure clusters on AWS with Kubernetes. This cluster automatically deploys containerized apps to the cloud. It allows AWS to use Kubernetes without installing, operating and maintaining its Kubernetes nodes or control plane.
The EKS of AWS was first introduced in 2017. But it couldn’t establish itself at the start. Because it was not providing a lot of features compared to its competitive products. The rumor was that AWS didn’t want to dive deep into the k8 world. But they want to stay competitive with the Kubernetes service. Now EKS has fixed all of its problems, and it is not very far to become a strong service of Amazon.
Features of Amazon EKS
Let’s have a look at some of EKG’s unique features.
- EKS runs a single-tenant Kubernetes control plane for each cluster. And this control plane infrastructure isn’t shared across accounts or AWS clusters.
- The control plane must consist of at least three etcd instances and two API server instances.
- All server instances run across three availability zones within an AWS region.
- EKS automatically monitors the control plane, removes the unhealthy control plane, and restarts them across the AWS region.
- Monitors the loads in control planes and provides necessary scaling to maintain high performance all the time.
- Amazon eks offers SLA for API server endpoint availability.
- EKS can use the Amazon VPC network to restrict traffic in the control plane clusters.
- EKS provides security by restricting control plane clusters for only one AWS account. It can’t view or receive communication from other accounts.
ECS vs EKS Concept
For container orchestration, AWS launched the ECS service. ECS refers to ‘Elastic Container Service’ and EKS is the Kubernetes service of Amazon. ECS was the first phase of EKS. ECS wasn’t a bad service.
But it couldn’t become a standard way to run containers in terms of pricing. After that, the EKS service stepped in. Let’s take a look at some of their discrepancies.
Networking
It is essential for containers to connect to a pod. This allows the user to assign security to individual instances without opening all ports.
ECS allows only 8 to 16 networks and 120 pods per instance. EKS lets you up to 750 pods per instance. All containers can share access to external and internal networks through this interface.
Infrastructure
ECS infrastructure reduces the load of setting up security, computing, and network configuration. ECS also has NLB( Network Load Balancer) and ALB(Application Load Balancer).
But if you want resiliency, EKS has open-source APIs, broad flexibility, and a vibrant ecosystem. Because Kubernetes infrastructure is designed for heavy lifting and workloads.
Security
Both ECS and EKS provide high security. Its networking, cluster, and management maintenance all remain in the safe hands, ECS has a deep integration with IAM. EKS has KIAM service but it is complex and eats additional costs.
Portability
ECS service is locked inside the Amazon infrastructure. So, you can’t move your clusters to another premises or environment. EKS provides better support in this case. You can run any cluster in any Kubernetes environment.
EKS Best Practices
EKS best practices provide a better implementation for setting a well-defined procedure for system design and development. This also displays a quick response and security posture. So, the common best practices are
Identify and Access Management (IAM)
IAM provides the authentication and authorization of AWS resources. It has a Least Privilege Principle that doesn’t give unnecessary permission. This principle should be applied to the node and pod levels. IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) restricts the access of pods running on the same node.
Pod’s Security Group
The pod is the smallest group of deployable units that share the storage and networks of how the containers will run. When implementing pods into a security group, developers and engineers should make sure that the container capabilities do not run as privileged. This can end up interfering with pods’ mutation.
Use of TLS
TLS is a protocol that provides the necessary security for communication over a network. It can also be used to encrypt communication between EKS nodes and applications. It can be used between clusters, nodes, role definition, and service roles. It is a good option to use TLS end-to-end encryption by using AWS Load Balancer Controller with Network Load Balancer in IP mode.
Conclusion
AWS service is a cloud-based platform, and so, it must have a proper scaling option to host the data of websites. AWS has developed an EKS model to use the K8 technology on their servers. This allows AWS to easily migrate and run it in any environment. Some people are confused about the ECS and EKS features.
It is important to understand what EKS is capable of. Other EKS features have caught the eyes of other developers, but EKS can only breathe in the Amazon data center. EKS also allows the server for the management and deployment of large containerized apps. EKS’s fast automation is necessary to provide support for every cloud platform.
