Best Practices for Creating an AWS EKS Cluster

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed service that allows you to easily run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to install, operate, and maintain your own Kubernetes control plane or nodes. This blog post will cover the best practices to keep in mind while creating and managing your EKS cluster.

1. Planning Your Cluster:

Before diving into EKS, plan your cluster according to your needs. Define what applications you’ll run, the expected workload, your security needs, and your business continuity strategies. Understanding your requirements will help design an efficient and cost-effective EKS cluster.

2. Choose the Right EC2 Instances:

While creating worker nodes for your EKS cluster, make sure you choose the right EC2 instance type. AWS offers a wide variety of instances optimized for different workloads. Use the ‘vCPU’ and ‘Memory’ attributes as the primary indicators for selection, but also consider network performance and attached storage capabilities.

3. Use AWS Fargate:

Consider using AWS Fargate, a serverless compute engine for containers, for running your Kubernetes workloads. Fargate removes the need to provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per application, and enhances security through application isolation.

4. Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

Ensure to implement RBAC for your EKS cluster to limit who can access the Kubernetes API server and what permissions they have. RBAC uses the “rbac.authorization.k8s.io” API group to drive authorization decisions, allowing you to create policies to secure your cluster.

5. Secure Your Cluster:

AWS provides multiple levels of security for EKS, including network policies and security groups. Use security groups to allow specific IP address ranges and CIDR blocks access to your cluster. Implement Kubernetes network policies to control the traffic between pods and clusters.

6. Auto-scaling:

EKS supports the Kubernetes native Horizontal Pod Autoscaler and the Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler. Utilizing these services can optimize resource utilization and costs. While the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler scales the number of pods, the Cluster Autoscaler scales the number of nodes in your cluster based on demand.

7. Use Multiple Availability Zones:

For high availability, create your EKS cluster across multiple availability zones. This provides redundancy for your applications and ensures they remain available should a single zone experience downtime.

8. Implement Monitoring and Logging:

Enable Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail to monitor your EKS cluster. CloudWatch provides you with metrics about CPU usage, latency, and request counts. CloudTrail logs API calls, allowing you to track changes to resources.

9. Keep Your EKS Cluster Updated:

Ensure your Kubernetes version on EKS is always updated. AWS maintains the Kubernetes control plane’s health and updates for EKS, but you’re responsible for upgrading the worker nodes. Regular updates ensure you have the latest security patches and new features.

10. Backup and Disaster Recovery:

Implement a backup and disaster recovery strategy. Use services like AWS Backup or third-party solutions to back up your EKS data. Test your recovery procedures to ensure you can restore operations swiftly in case of an incident.

11. Utilize Managed Node Groups:

Managed Node Groups automate the management and updates of nodes, providing automatic version upgrades and patching. This allows you to focus on applications running on the cluster rather than the underlying infrastructure.

12. Leverage AWS IAM for Service Accounts:

Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles for service accounts to assign IAM permissions to Kubernetes service accounts. This enables secure access to AWS services from within the pods, without sharing credentials.

13. Enable Cluster Autoscaler:

AWS EKS supports the Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler. This feature automatically adjusts the size of the Kubernetes cluster based on the current demand, helping to optimize costs and resource utilization.

14. Leverage AWS App Mesh with EKS:

App Mesh is a service mesh that provides application-level networking support. When used with EKS, it gives you end-to-end visibility and helps to control communications for services running on the cluster, improving overall performance and stability.

15. Use Amazon RDS for Database Services:

If your applications running on EKS need a relational database, consider using Amazon RDS. It’s a managed database service that scales easily and offers automated backups, patch management, and failover support.

16. Take Advantage of ECR for Docker Images:

Use Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) for storing and retrieving Docker images. It’s a secure and scalable solution integrated with EKS, and it supports private repositories.

By keeping these suggestions in mind, you can create and manage your AWS EKS clusters more effectively and securely. It’s also important to continuously stay informed about the latest best practices and updates from AWS to get the most out of your EKS deployments.