Amazon EKS: managed Kubernetes, your data plane Diagram

The split that defines EKS

• AWS runs the control plane in its own account across AZs
• You run every node, add-on and CNI in your VPC
• An EKS cluster costs $0.10 per hour before any nodes

Pods are first-class VPC citizens

• The VPC CNI gives each pod a routable VPC IP address
• Security groups and NACLs apply to pods, not just nodes
• Load balancers target pod IPs directly, skipping node ports

ECS or EKS?

• EKS if you need Kubernetes APIs, CRDs, operators or portability
• ECS if you want a smaller surface and fewer moving parts
• EKS gives you an ecosystem; it also gives you upgrades to run