Amazon EKS vs kops

Overview

kops

Stacks94

Followers77

Votes0

GitHub Stars16.5K

Forks4.7K

Amazon EKS

Stacks937

Followers502

Votes3

Amazon EKS vs kops: What are the differences?

Amazon EKS: Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It simplifies the process of running Kubernetes on AWS by taking care of the undifferentiated heavy lifting tasks such as cluster management, scaling, and infrastructure provisioning.
kops: kops, short for Kubernetes Operations, is a command-line utility that helps in the creation, management, and upgrading of Kubernetes clusters. It is an open-source tool developed by the Kubernetes community and can be used on various cloud platforms or on-premises environments.
Managed Service vs. Self-management: The key difference between Amazon EKS and kops is the level of management provided. EKS is a managed service, which means that AWS handles the underlying infrastructure, updates, and maintenance of the Kubernetes clusters. On the other hand, kops requires manual configuration and management of the infrastructure, making it more suitable for users who prefer more control and customization.
Integration with AWS Services: Another important difference is the integration with other AWS services. EKS seamlessly integrates with various AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), allowing for easy integration and utilization of these services. kops, being a more generic tool, does not have the same level of native integration, requiring manual configuration and integration efforts.
Ease of Deployment: EKS provides an easy deployment experience with simplified cluster creation and management through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or API. It abstracts away many of the complexities involved in setting up and managing a Kubernetes cluster. On the other hand, kops requires more manual configuration and set up, making it suitable for users who are comfortable with managing infrastructure and have specific requirements.
Cost Structure: The cost structure differs between EKS and kops. EKS follows the AWS pricing model, where users pay for the resources consumed by the cluster, such as EC2 instances and storage. kops, being a tool for self-management, allows users to choose their own infrastructure provider and pricing model. This can give users more flexibility and potentially cost savings, depending on their specific needs and choice of infrastructure provider.

In Summary, Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service provided by AWS that simplifies cluster management and integrates with various AWS services, while kops is a self-management tool that requires more manual configuration and offers more flexibility in terms of infrastructure and cost.

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Advice on kops, Amazon EKS

Piergiorgio

Head of Engineering at SuperAwesome

Sep 5, 2019

Decided

At SuperAwesome we build the digital ecosystem that powers a better and safer internet for kids, therefore we want our engineers to focus on building "kidtech" as opposed to just "tech. Every hour spent on maintaining our own k8s clusters is an hour that we are not spending making kidtech. Migrating to EKS helped us had a positive impact on our productivity as the k8s masters are ran and maintained by AWS.

The migration forced us to upgrade all our infra to the latest and supported versions of k8s. It also helped us consolidating our infrastructure around standard configuration. Both are indeed good outcomes. Keep in mind that if you want to try an experimental feature of k8s, or want to stick on a legacy version for some reason, neither option is available with EKS.

2.45k views2.45k

Comments

Andres

Lead Senior Software Engineer at InTouch Technology

Jun 3, 2020

Decided

If you want to integrate your cluster and control end to end your pipeline with AWS tools like ECR and Code Pipeline your best option is ECS using a EC2 instance. There are pros and cons but it's easier to integrate using cloud formation templates and visual UI for approvals, etc. ECS is free, you need to pay only for the EC2 instance but unfortunately, it is not standard then you cannot use standard tools to see and manage your Kubernetes.
EKS in the other hand uses standard Kubernates definitions but you need to pay for the service and also for the EC2 instance(s) you have in your cluster.

91.7k views91.7k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

kops	Amazon EKS
It helps you create, destroy, upgrade and maintain production-grade, highly available, Kubernetes clusters from the command line. AWS (Amazon Web Services) is currently officially supported, with GCE in beta support , and VMware vSphere in alpha, and other platforms planned.	Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to install and operate your own Kubernetes clusters.
-	Managed Kubernetes Control Plane - Amazon EKS provides a scalable and highly-available control plane that runs across multiple AWS availability zones.; Security and Networking - Amazon EKS makes it easy to provide security for your Kubernetes clusters, with advanced features and integrations to AWS services and technology partner solutions.; Logging - Amazon EKS is integrated with Amazon CloudWatch Logs and AWS CloudTrail to provide visibility and audit history tracking of your cluster and user activity.; Certified Conformant - Amazon EKS runs upstream Kubernetes and is certified Kubernetes conformant, so you can use all the existing plugins and tooling from the Kubernetes community.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 16.5K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 4.7K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 94	Stacks 937
Followers 77	Followers 502
Votes 0	Votes 3
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet	Pros 1 Broad package manager using helm 1 Possibility to log in into the pods 1 Better control
Integrations
No integrations available	Weave Amazon CloudWatch Datadog Amazon VPC MongoDB Atlas Rancher GitLab Terraform Codefresh AWS CloudTrail

What are some alternatives to kops, Amazon EKS?

Amazon EC2 Container Service

Amazon EC2 Container Service lets you launch and stop container-enabled applications with simple API calls, allows you to query the state of your cluster from a centralized service, and gives you access to many familiar Amazon EC2 features like security groups, EBS volumes and IAM roles.

Google Kubernetes Engine

Container Engine takes care of provisioning and maintaining the underlying virtual machine cluster, scaling your application, and operational logistics like logging, monitoring, and health management.

Containerum

Containerum is built to aid cluster management, teamwork and resource allocation. Containerum runs on top of any Kubernetes cluster and provides a friendly Web UI for cluster management.

Nomad

Nomad is a cluster manager, designed for both long lived services and short lived batch processing workloads. Developers use a declarative job specification to submit work, and Nomad ensures constraints are satisfied and resource utilization is optimized by efficient task packing. Nomad supports all major operating systems and virtualized, containerized, or standalone applications.

Apache Mesos

Apache Mesos is a cluster manager that simplifies the complexity of running applications on a shared pool of servers.

DC/OS

Unlike traditional operating systems, DC/OS spans multiple machines within a network, aggregating their resources to maximize utilization by distributed applications.

Azure Container Service

Azure Container Service optimizes the configuration of popular open source tools and technologies specifically for Azure. You get an open solution that offers portability for both your containers and your application configuration. You select the size, the number of hosts, and choice of orchestrator tools, and Container Service handles everything else.

Docker Cloud

Docker Cloud is the best way to deploy and manage Dockerized applications. Docker Cloud makes it easy for new Docker users to manage and deploy the full spectrum of applications, from single container apps to distributed microservices stacks, to any cloud or on-premises infrastructure.

Mesosphere

Mesosphere offers a layer of software that organizes your machines, VMs, and cloud instances and lets applications draw from a single pool of intelligently- and dynamically-allocated resources, increasing efficiency and reducing operational complexity.

Gardener

Many Open Source tools exist which help in creating and updating single Kubernetes clusters. However, the more clusters you need the harder it becomes to operate, monitor, manage and keep all of them alive and up-to-date. And that is exactly what project Gardener focuses on.

Related Comparisons

Amazon EKS vs kops: What are the differences?

Amazon EKS: Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It simplifies the process of running Kubernetes on AWS by taking care of the undifferentiated heavy lifting tasks such as cluster management, scaling, and infrastructure provisioning.
kops: kops, short for Kubernetes Operations, is a command-line utility that helps in the creation, management, and upgrading of Kubernetes clusters. It is an open-source tool developed by the Kubernetes community and can be used on various cloud platforms or on-premises environments.
Managed Service vs. Self-management: The key difference between Amazon EKS and kops is the level of management provided. EKS is a managed service, which means that AWS handles the underlying infrastructure, updates, and maintenance of the Kubernetes clusters. On the other hand, kops requires manual configuration and management of the infrastructure, making it more suitable for users who prefer more control and customization.
Integration with AWS Services: Another important difference is the integration with other AWS services. EKS seamlessly integrates with various AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), allowing for easy integration and utilization of these services. kops, being a more generic tool, does not have the same level of native integration, requiring manual configuration and integration efforts.
Ease of Deployment: EKS provides an easy deployment experience with simplified cluster creation and management through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or API. It abstracts away many of the complexities involved in setting up and managing a Kubernetes cluster. On the other hand, kops requires more manual configuration and set up, making it suitable for users who are comfortable with managing infrastructure and have specific requirements.
Cost Structure: The cost structure differs between EKS and kops. EKS follows the AWS pricing model, where users pay for the resources consumed by the cluster, such as EC2 instances and storage. kops, being a tool for self-management, allows users to choose their own infrastructure provider and pricing model. This can give users more flexibility and potentially cost savings, depending on their specific needs and choice of infrastructure provider.

Amazon EKS vs kops

Overview