Kubernetes on AWS
Open-source container management and orchestration
Overview
Kubernetes is open-source software that allows you to deploy and manage containerized applications at scale. Kubernetes manages clusters of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) compute instances and runs containers on those instances with processes for deployment, maintenance, and scaling. Using Kubernetes, you can run any type of containerized applications using the same toolset on-premises and in the cloud.
AWS makes it easy to run Kubernetes in the cloud with scalable and highly available virtual machine infrastructure, community-backed service integrations, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), a certified conformant, managed Kubernetes service.
How Kubernetes works
Kubernetes works by managing a cluster of compute instances and scheduling containers to run on the cluster based on the available compute resources and the resource requirements of each container. Containers are run in logical groupings called pods and you can run and scale one or many containers together as a pod.
Kubernetes control plane software decides when and where to run your pods, manages traffic routing, and scales your pods based on utilization or other metrics that you define. Kubernetes automatically starts pods on your cluster based on their resource requirements and automatically restarts pods if they or the instances they are running on fail. Each pod is given an IP address and a single DNS name, which Kubernetes uses to connect your services with each other and external traffic.
Why use Kubernetes
Because Kubernetes is an open-source project, you can use it to run your containerized applications anywhere without needing to change your operational tooling. Kubernetes is maintained by a large community of volunteers and is always improving. Additionally, many other open-source projects and vendors build and maintain Kubernetes-compatible software that you can use to improve and extend your application architecture.
Run Kubernetes On AWS
AWS makes it easy to run Kubernetes. You can choose to manage Kubernetes infrastructure yourself with Amazon EC2 or get an automatically provisioned, managed Kubernetes control plane with Amazon EKS. Either way, you get powerful, community-backed integrations to AWS services like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and service discovery as well as the security, scalability, and high-availability of AWS.