# AWS EKS

> Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) runs a managed, highly available Kubernetes control plane on AWS and integrates it with VPC, IAM and load balancers.

- Source: https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-eks/
- Published: 2026-10-05
- Updated: 2026-10-05
- Author: Javier Ruiz Jiménez (https://www.javierruizjimenez.com/)
- Site: IT Wonder Lab (https://www.itwonderlab.com/)

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**Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)** is the managed [Kubernetes](https://www.itwonderlab.com/tutorials/kubernetes/) service of AWS. AWS runs and scales the control plane (the API servers and etcd) across several Availability Zones, and you decide where the applications run.

### Key concepts

- **Cluster**: the managed control plane, with a Kubernetes API endpoint that can be public, private or both.
- **Compute options**: *managed node groups* ([EC2](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ec2/) instances in an [Auto Scaling group](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-auto-scaling/) that EKS creates and updates), *self-managed nodes*, **[Fargate](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-fargate/)** (serverless pods) and **EKS Auto Mode**, where AWS also manages the nodes.
- **Networking**: the VPC CNI gives each pod an IP address of the [VPC](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-vpc/). Services of type `LoadBalancer` and Ingress objects create [Elastic Load Balancers](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-elastic-load-balancing/) through the AWS Load Balancer Controller.
- **Access and permissions**: [IAM](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-iam/) to authenticate to the cluster, and *IAM roles for service accounts* (IRSA) or *EKS Pod Identity* to give pods AWS permissions.
- **Add-ons**: managed versions of CoreDNS, kube-proxy, the VPC CNI and the EBS and [EFS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-efs/) CSI drivers.
- **Storage**: [EBS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ebs/) and [EFS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-efs/) volumes as persistent volumes. Images come from [ECR](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ecr/).
- Kubernetes versions have a limited support period, so clusters must be upgraded regularly.

### Pricing

A charge per cluster per hour (higher for versions in extended support) plus the compute (EC2 or Fargate), storage and load balancers that the cluster uses. See the [EKS pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/).

### With Terraform

The resources are `aws_eks_cluster`, `aws_eks_node_group`, `aws_eks_fargate_profile`, `aws_eks_addon` and the IAM roles they need. The module `terraform-aws-modules/eks/aws` builds a complete cluster.

See tutorials:

-   [Terraform AWS EKS Cluster Deployment & Application Publishing through ALB](https://www.itwonderlab.com/terraform-eks/)
-   [How to Deploy Applications in Kubernetes using OpenTofu](https://www.itwonderlab.com/kubernetes-with-opentofu/)

See also: [AWS ECS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ecs/).