What is EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service)?
AWS's managed Kubernetes service that runs the K8s control plane for you.
Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service that takes care of running the control plane (API server, etcd, scheduler) so you focus on running workloads. EKS supports managed node groups, self-managed nodes, and Fargate (serverless). Key EKS-specific features: IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) for pod-level AWS permissions, VPC CNI for native VPC networking, and integration with AWS Load Balancer Controller. Most production K8s on AWS runs on EKS.
Deep Dive Guide
aws eks vs gke vs aks managed kubernetes
More Cloud Terms
ECR (Elastic Container Registry)
AWS's fully managed container image registry service.
Fargate
AWS serverless compute engine for containers — no node management required.
IAM (Identity and Access Management)
AWS service for managing user identities and permissions for cloud resources.
IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts)
EKS feature that allows Kubernetes pods to assume AWS IAM roles without node-level credentials.
Spot Instance
Unused cloud capacity offered at up to 90% discount that can be reclaimed with 2-minute notice.
VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
A logically isolated network in the cloud where you launch your cloud resources.
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