Kubernetes recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and it sure has come a long way. Despite its renowned complexity, K8s has since become the de facto standard for container orchestration. Quickly after Docker popularized containerization, more organizations began using containers to deploy applications. This meant that they needed a way to manage and orchestrate containers at scale. When Google introduced Kubernetes, other large tech companies, such as Red Hat, IBM, and Microsoft, were also involved, spurring early adoption. Gradually, major cloud providers began offering managed Kubernetes services, making the technology easier for organizations to adopt.
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) in 2015
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in 2017
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) in 2018
Other companies, such as Red Hat, also began incorporating Kubernetes into their supported offerings (for example, self-hosted and cloud-hosted OpenShift), further increasing enterprise adoption. Originally adopting Kubernetes as part of a broader shift towards containerization and cloud-native technologies, many organizations are reassessing their container orchestration strategies as increasingly mature options become available.
The kOps Era
For years, Kubernetes Operations (kOps) has been a popular choice for managing Kubernetes clusters. First released on September 8, 2016, kOps quickly became a go-to solution for Kubernetes management. It was introduced before many managed Kubernetes services, such as Amazon EKS, were even available. This enabled organizations to adopt Kubernetes early and gain experience with the technology.
The appeal of kOps stemmed from several important capabilities it offered:
- Flexibility and control: kOps provided organizations with greater control over Kubernetes cluster configuration compared to other options available at the time, allowing organizations to customize their K8s environment to meet specific requirements, configure cloud environments based on their own preferences, and have full access to master nodes for fine-tuning and troubleshooting.
- Open source and community-driven: As an open source tool, kOps aligned well with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem. It also benefited from community contributions and rapid feature development. For organizations that valued open source solutions, it made sense to contribute to or customize kOps as a valuable resource in the ecosystem.
- Multi-cloud support: While primarily used with Amazon Web Services (AWS), kOps also offered support for other cloud providers (Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is currently officially supported, with DigitalOcean, Hetzner and OpenStack in beta support, and Azure in alpha). This support made kOps attractive for organizations trying to maintain flexibility in their cloud strategy (and avoid vendor lock-in).
- Advanced features: kOps includes support for zero-config addons, and multiple Container Network Interfaces (CNIs), enabling flexibility and advanced networking capabilities. It also supported Terraform for infrastructure management early on and has enabled automated high-availability setups for years.
- Cost-effectiveness: For smaller or temporary clusters, kOps was often more cost-effective than other options. As an open-source and freely available solution, organizations only paid for the underlying infrastructure.
Overall, kOps offered organizations a mature, battle-tested solution for running Kubernetes in production environments early on, using Kubernetes' native controller and thereby ensuring compatibility and performance.
Why Migrate to EKS?
While kOps has historically served many organizations very well, many engineering leaders are now considering moving to EKS. Multiple factors are driving engineering leaders to consider making this shift to EKS:
- Simplified management: EKS provides a managed Kubernetes control plane (including updates and scaling), eliminating the need for organizations to maintain and operate their own master nodes. This reduces the operational burden on DevOps teams and allows them to focus on how best to deliver their applications instead of control-plane management.
- Enhanced security and compliance: EKS is fully certified and compliant with regulatory standards such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). EKS also provides automated security patching for the control plane. Plus, the shared responsibility model means organizations are not solely responsible for securing their Kubernetes clusters.
- Cost optimization: Switching to EKS can minimize expenses related to managing master nodes. It also includes support for EC2 spot instances for worker nodes, enabling more cost optimization. It may also reduce overall infrastructure costs, especially for high-availability setups.
- Improved reliability and availability: EKS offers a 99.95% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the Kubernetes control plane, automatic detection and replacement of unhealthy control plane nodes, and a high-availability setup across multiple AWS Availability Zones (AZs).
- Native AWS integration: EKS runs natively in Amazon's ecosystem, providing seamless integration with other AWS services, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS networking services (including native subnet management between the aws-vpc-cni and existing virtual private clouds (VPC), and Kubernetes-native Network Load Balancer configuration (NLB)), and flexible Fargate configurations.
- Simple, consistent upgrades: Unlike kOps, where upgrades sometimes introduce unexpected changes, EKS provides more predictable and smoother upgrade processes. EKS also allows for upgrades and patching with minimal or no downtime, while kOps often requires manual intervention or custom tooling to provide the same experience.
By switching from kOps to EKS, organizations can offload some of the heavy lifting of managing Kubernetes to AWS, allowing them to focus more on their core business applications.
Time to Switch?
Many organizations running older versions of kOps were caught off guard when kOps dropped support for specific CNIs that their clusters used prior to Kubernetes 1.28. Suddenly, the upgrade process became much more complicated than prior versions and cluster rebuilds became one of the more simple and less disruptive options. Since organizations must continually update their Kubernetes, this was a major catalyst for engineering leadership to consider migrating to managed services like EKS. Some of the biggest benefits of EKS include:
- A consistent platform across projects
- EKS upgrades can be scheduled during business hours, reducing the need for off-hours work
- Offering more hybrid options than ever before, a shift to EKS positions organizations for future flexibility
While kOps played a vital role in the early adoption of Kubernetes and still offers an excellent open-source, flexible Kubernetes configuration option, the managed nature of EKS now presents a compelling case for migration. The decision to move from kOps to EKS should be based on each organization's specific needs, growth trajectory, and where engineering leaders want to focus their efforts.
When considering this transition, remember that the migration process requires careful planning and execution. However, the long-term benefits of reduced operational overhead, improved reliability, and seamless integration with AWS services make EKS an attractive option for many organizations looking to scale their Kubernetes operations efficiently. Want help transitioning from kOps to EKS? Fairwinds has extensive experience with this process, and can make the move a simple process.
