From AWS, I use many services, but mostly my work revolves around Cloud Native, specifically Amazon EKS. Kubernetes is my area of focus and expertise. Most of my expertise is around Kubernetes and Cloud Native technologies. This is why I don't call myself a full cloud offering expert, but I mostly focus on the Kubernetes usage with other OSS solutions around K8S. It's not really a niche; it's huge.

I handle both application workloads and data ingestion workloads.

Based on my experience, the best features are backed up with extensive security that AWS allows and EKS is firmly integrated into their entire AWS cloud offering. The second feature is the ability to do what we call an in-place upgrade (upgrading an existing cluster), which is a very strong capability. Additionally, the ability to integrate other add-ons such as service mesh exists, but I don't use it heavily. The ability to use all EC2 node options, including GPU options, works quite efficiently.

The freshness of the Kubernetes versions is the most interesting aspect around CSP's Kubernetes offering; it's about how close they are to the latest and greatest of Kubernetes. GCP is the leaders in that area, but Amazon is quite close behind, which is very important.

It is definitely helpful to streamline the application deployment process.

Regarding the flexibility part, if I want to use something such as Kong/Linkerd service mesh or other solutions, most of the CSPs bind you to their own solutions rather than allow other options to be made and integrated with, and this is what I mostly miss in their part.

In terms of built-in observability in Amazon EKS, I know it's mostly about the great integration with AWS itself. When I want to integrate it with any Grafana or Prometheus solution within AWS, things work efficiently with IAM. However, when I want to cross the boundary of the CSP, that becomes an issue. Integrating some open-source solutions works, but I need to work really hard for that.

The major area for improvement I've seen involves deep diving into one CSP with no equivalent solution elsewhere. The most important consideration is about the pricing and the flexibility of moving and building a multi-cloud environment for most customers. The issue is that when CSPs try to lock you in, flexibility becomes the most critical aspect.

Amazon aims to put you in a very Amazon-centric environment, but you need to be aware when you're using Amazon EKS that you're not locked in. The major paradigm for customers with maturity in using cloud solutions  is to avoid vendor lock-in. Most early adopters understand this, but the main mass, such as the banking companies I work with, aren't in the same state of mind; they need to build everything from a Cloud Native perspective with as much OSS as possible.

I am still using all these technologies.

I would rate stability as nine out of ten.

I would rate scalability for Amazon EKS as nine out of ten.

For technical support with a business plan, I would rate it as nine out of ten.

If support is not paid, I would rate it as six out of ten.

This difference is mainly because of the response time.

With business support, I rate the solution overall as nine out of ten.

Positive

Considering the pricing of the product, I think it's affordable because it's mostly about EC2 stuff, and the control plane is not too expensive, taking into account what they do behind the scenes. Managing my own stuff in an on-prem environment helps me say that it's quite inexpensive in that aspect. The control plane is cheap, but the pricing of EC2 remains the same. I mostly don't prefer using EKS Fargate - managed containerized environment because it makes the devops team dumber and allows vendor locked in; it prevents me from managing my own infrastructure - scaling and fine tuning of resources' usage. Using margate as Autopilot in GCP and other products makes me more inclined to be locked in since it provides many features without the need to think much, but eventually, that's how the CSP will lock you in.

The integrations with IAM and Elastic Load Balancing are fundamental aspects. EC2 is the most important integration, and IAM is very strong in Amazon EKS, stronger than in other clouds. However, I need to compare it regularly as this landscape changes daily. The ELB and all the load balancing capabilities are quite strong in Amazon architecture and Amazon EKS architecture as well, so it integrates efficiently. I miss the flexibility to use other options, but I understand why they integrated it so tightly into their platform.

This isn't only an Amazon issue; it also occurs on GCP and other platforms, including Azure.

Overall rating: 9 out of 10.

Hybrid 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)

We are migrating our services into container services. We build websites and all of our products' backends are based on Amazon EKS.

The simplicity and management portal make it a neat solution. You don't have to fiddle around with too many open source tools, as it's just a comprehensive solution.

We use the pipeline, which is critical for us to deploy automatically. This eliminates manual intervention, which is really helpful.

We initially had some issues getting the logging out of it, because what they're providing into CloudTrail is what we get. If we wanted to go in-depth, we had to deploy third-party tools. We did try the sidecar way of getting the logs. Ideally, if the platform was able to provide those kinds of valuable logs, that would be beneficial. Adding enhanced logging capabilities would be a nice improvement.

We have been using the solution for three plus years.

Time to value is good with fast deployment and very good documentation that is really helpful.

I don't personally deal with the costing part, but I think it's a fair amount. That's the only reason we're using it continuously, as otherwise we would have moved somewhere else.

The implementation was done in-house.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 9.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The use cases for the product involve provisioning of infrastructure and auto provisioning of infrastructure.

I have managed on-premise deployments in my use case with a Helm chart.

The biggest advantages of Amazon EKS include load balancing, auto scalability, and platform integration.

The solution includes automated node provisioning features.

The integration with AWS services involves platform services only.

We usually get deployed and only need to tweak the source code; however, I think the monitoring part and observability part could be improved.

I have been selling it for almost two years.

The scalability of Amazon EKS deserves a perfect rating of ten.

The technical support from Amazon deserves a rating of ten.

Positive

I would rate the ease of installing Amazon EKS in the middle area, giving it a five.

I have moved to pre-sales activity now.

I am selling Kubernetes Engine from Amazon.

I can rate Amazon EKS as nine because I just need to see some improvement.

I want to be a reference for Amazon.

The overall rating for Amazon EKS is 9 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our typical use case for Amazon EKS is that we have a number of applications and microservices that we host in EKS. We have a separate code base for the infrastructure platform, and the microservice team and the application team will be deploying their microservices on their own. We have configured it in a way that it could be easily accessible for developers as well as the platform engineers; we just platformize things. Earlier, I was using ECS, and the reason we use Amazon EKS is for better adaptation of Kubernetes, fitting our multi-tenant model.

The best features of Amazon EKS are that it is very plain by itself, but we use a number of optimizations, such as Carpenter for scaling and node auto-scaling, and Keda for application and microservices auto-scaling, as an event-based auto-scaler. Additionally, we use Portainer less, and for configuration, we utilize Cert Manager and Istio. It's not only Amazon EKS but a combination of various components within it.

By default, if you just install Amazon EKS, you can deploy your application, but to have it enterprise-ready, you have to configure a number of other things that will boost productivity.

Amazon EKS's deep integration with AWS services, such as IAM and elastic load balancing, has created some challenges. For example, we have something in place already, and there are some issues with enabling FIPS, which is FedRAMP compliant for the load balancers. You cannot change the SSL policy for the load balancer; I am not sure if it has been patched by AWS yet. However, apart from that, we use it effectively, and it is more flexible.

Regarding built-in observability in Amazon EKS, there is CloudWatch and CloudTrail. However, you cannot profile the applications; we can collect logs in S3, but there is no streaming solution available. Only CloudWatch exists, so we use other tools for observability and do not depend solely on CloudWatch, only relying on it for crucial workloads and infrastructure logs.

Amazon EKS can be improved by having the maintenance of Kubernetes versions managed better, as everything is handled by the Kubernetes team and possibly a separate team at AWS. We have to constantly maintain upgrades and ensure EKS add-ons are up-to-date, requiring us to upgrade the Kubernetes version and releases. They could provide a managed service in the backend instead of making customers handle it; we are currently doing it, but it's a regular activity we do per quarter.

I have around six years of experience with Amazon EKS.

Amazon EKS is a stable solution, as it is only available in AWS alone.

It is a scalable solution for us.

Before using Amazon EKS, I was using ECS. I switched from ECS to Amazon EKS because our product design changed. With numerous small services that you don't want to manage the backend infrastructure for, you can easily deploy and let it be with ECS; it is a more straightforward solution. However, considering cost with Amazon EKS, it may be pretty high, but it serves its purpose very effectively without management overhead.

If you are going with Amazon EKS, you must change your deployment strategy and develop applications for Kubernetes, writing deployments and pods, or stateful sets, which provides more flexibility. There are pros and cons to both solutions, and you have to evaluate which will suit your use case. In our situation, we had some applications in ECS as in Amazon EKS, and that was an architectural decision discussed internally within teams.

The initial setup with Amazon EKS was hard initially, but being accustomed to it now, it's not that difficult; it's relatively easy.

We have seen ROI with Amazon EKS; we have a separate team actively working on it. We have cost explorer available, and a bill forecast based on usage allows us to determine whether resources are underutilized or overutilized. You can generate reports and analyze them. I have done this for ECS, but for Amazon EKS, I haven't worked on cost savings directly, as there is a separate team responsible for that.

My experience with pricing for Amazon EKS is limited as there's a separate team for that, and I do not have much knowledge of specifics. However, the pricing is based on the instance type we use in the EKS node group, so it should cover that aspect; their pricing is generally easy to understand in terms of instances.

We are using a cloud deployment model. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon EKS an eight.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use cases for Amazon EKS are securing the clusters and providing mesh gateways between the clusters.

The features that I find useful in Amazon EKS are Istio, Webhooks, service accounts, and ReplicaSets with different service accounts and accounts that we work with.

The main benefits that I received from using Amazon EKS are that it is a managed cluster and offers simplicity.

I am not the right person to ask what could be improved in Amazon EKS to make this tool better for the next release. A continuation of the managed pieces would be beneficial because there is no integration of clusters. They are all separate with no real managed cluster type of capability.

I have been working with Amazon EKS for about 3 and 1/2 to 4 years.

The initial setup for Amazon EKS is not straightforward. Kubernetes is not an easy technology because there are many technologies in the cluster. You need to understand infrastructure code to deploy it and understand all of the requirements alongside it. You cannot simply request deployment of EKS clusters as it does not work that way.

I would rate the setup for Amazon EKS as a three because I need to have other technologies and other tool sets to make it work. I cannot just go through Amazon's console and request a three-node cluster deployment because that does not work.

Regarding stability, Amazon EKS is stable. Once it is up, it works. I would rate it as a nine.

For scalability, Amazon EKS is scalable. I would rate it as a nine.

I have never contacted customer support for any issues on Amazon EKS.

Neutral

The solutions I evaluated before working with Amazon EKS include Grafana, Prometheus, K9s, Istio, and Consul.

The main benefits in Amazon EKS compared to those tools are that it is a different tool set completely, and they provide better visibility and connectivity.

The initial setup for Amazon EKS is not straightforward. Kubernetes is not an easy technology because there are many technologies in the cluster. You need to understand infrastructure code to deploy it and understand all of the requirements alongside it. You cannot simply request deployment of EKS clusters as it does not work that way.

I would rate the setup for Amazon EKS as a three because I need to have other technologies and other tool sets to make it work. I cannot just go through Amazon's console and request a three-node cluster deployment because that does not work.

I suggest understanding the entire form before understanding Kubernetes. I would rate Amazon EKS as a seven out of ten because Kubernetes across all CSPs is complicated. I do not think it is an easy technology to give it anything more than a seven.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I use Amazon EKS to provide the computing power for my applications. We have over thirty clusters in Amazon EKS. Our team uses Amazon EKS to deploy new applications using Helm and to manage our infrastructure. We use Amazon EKS to scale and deploy more applications using different namespaces. Amazon EKS services help us provide clusters where we deploy APIs, services, cron jobs, and other applications to support our services.

The features I find most valuable in Amazon EKS include the VPC CNI, which provides networking inside the cluster, and the EBS CSI driver, which is an example of the add-ons used with Amazon EKS. Kube-proxy for DNS is also a valuable feature. The features we use for managing container applications, like scheduling and scaling, simplify our use of Amazon EKS.

I would like to see improvements in the management capabilities that are native to AWS for Amazon EKS. Our current use involves using a different tool to administer the management, and I believe enhancing this aspect would be beneficial.

I have been using Amazon EKS for four or five years, mostly in financial services.

During the initial setup, I needed to learn about Docker, networking, and microservices, which was a challenge as I didn't have a background in microservices. My first application took three months to deploy, but now, with automation and CI/CD, we can deploy cycles of twenty applications swiftly. Initially, two people were required to deploy Amazon EKS.

Amazon EKS is very stable, and when properly configured, I rate it ten out of ten. In my notes, it's a nine. I did experience some challenges with network stability but was able to resolve them with AWS technical support.

We use the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) to provide elasticity to our applications. This allows us to scale our applications or APIs as needed, offering reliability through the automation of scaling processes. I rate the scalability as higher than eight.

Technical support from AWS for Amazon EKS is excellent. I rate it eight out of ten. Recently, we faced a network issue, and AWS technical support provided guidance to resolve the problem successfully. Their support was crucial for directing our efforts and solving our IP-related issues.

Positive

My first experience with Amazon EKS was difficult, and I would rate the initial setup as two because it was challenging without prior experience in microservices. However, after the initial setup, my perception improved, and I now rate it as five or six.

Two people were necessary to deploy my Amazon EKS.

We are making a significant effort to transform our usage of Amazon EKS, which was previously rated as eight or nine in terms of cost. Now, it stands at six or seven due to optimizing our workload.

Overall, I rate Amazon EKS as a nine out of ten. It's a very stable and reliable product.

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)

I deal with application development. I have used AWS services for configuring elastic search, deploying in pods, and using the CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins to build and deploy applications.

Amazon EKS allows upscaling and downscaling by reallocating resources. It is possible to configure everything, monitor applications, and perform routing in pods, securing the application with whitelisting. Datadog can be used to trace applications for performance issues or errors. It is an effective platform for cloud operations on AWS, similar to its counterpart on Azure.

There is room for improvement in making Amazon EKS less error-prone when writing on the YAML file. A UI could help generate config files, simplifying the process for developers who are not architects. It is very time-consuming, and companies often expect developers to do everything, which can be overwhelming.

I have used AWS for three or four years, specifically for Amazon EKS for two years.

It is not easy to configure Amazon EKS, and it requires very detailed attention to configuration and deployment. It can be error-prone and time-consuming to redeploy until a stable configuration is achieved.

Amazon EKS is effective for scalability, providing features for upscaling and downscaling resources as needed.

Their technical support team is good, but they do not instruct on what to do. Having to know what questions to ask is essential. The documentation is adequate but could include more practical insights.

Neutral

The pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups. Offering a free version could help small companies.

Overall, Amazon EKS is a great technology, but the knowledge required to use it is scarce. It is a skill in itself, and developers must undertake multiple roles, which can be difficult. I rate Amazon EKS a seven because it is not easy for developers to configure without a solid base of knowledge.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)