Kubernetes Cloud: let’s see up close Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

The most popular Cloud Services for Kubernetes are with no doubt Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

These services are called “managed”. What do we mean by “managed”? Basically, whoever uploads a configuration file on a Kubernetes server, benefits from the provisioning of the whole server-side architecture made by Kubernetes itself thanks to the providers’ work.

Let’s see them up close and understand how much they can be useful to use Kubernetes at the highest level. 

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service is a relatively new service; released in 2018, it has become the main character of a steady, voluminous and incessant growth. 

With EKS it is possible to launch, execute and reshape Kubernetes applications in AWS cloud or locally. EKS is based on Kubernetes Upstream, this service is indeed available in different AWS Regions, that is data centers scattered all over the world.  

EKS also includes integrated security and cryptography options, as well as the automation of the key management activities of Kubernetes like patch application, node provisioning and varied updates. Amongst the latter, we can include the automatic update, the integration with CloudWatch for the registration, CloudTrail for the control and IAM for the access authorizations. Moreover, in order to maximize the functionalities for its customers, AWS contributes to the codebase K8s open source. 

More recently, AWS introduced a new K8s open source distribution, it is called EKS Distro and it is a new distribution option for Amazon EKS which allows you to create and manage Kubernetes clusters in your infrastructure, also including virtual machines. 

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Google Kubernetes Engine is the first cloud “managed” service of Kubernetes to impose itself in the market. We are talking about a managed environment for the distribution and management of containerized applications in a secure and flexible Google infrastructure.

GKE is nowadays considered as one of the most advanced Kubernetes platforms available on the market. Projected for Google Cloud in the first place, it can be indiscriminately distributed both in hybrid or local environments. GKE greatly simplified the cluster creation: not by chance, the tool offers some advanced features for the management of clusters, among them we can find load balancing, automatic scalability, some automatic updates like automatic server repair, registration and monitoring. 

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 

Microsoft AKS is gradually becoming the most used application by Kubernetes users. Just as GKE and EKS, AKS can offer to its users an upstream K8s environment with automatic updates and cluster monitoring that can simplify the distribution and management of Kubernetes operations. AKS offers different ways of executing cluster provisioning: Web console, command line, Azure resource manager, Terraform and much more. 

You should know that Kubernetes Azure service (previously known as ACS – Azure Container Service) was born as a platform independent from the orchestrer that supports Kubernetes. Indeed, by the end of 2017, Microsoft decided to offer Kubernetes managing services and, as a consequence, to deprecate ACS by continuing to offer his “support” to Kubernetes thanks to AKS.