I'm curious about the viability of kOps in today's cloud landscape. With options like EKS and other cluster management tools available, do companies still prefer using kOps to maintain their own control planes? What are the advantages or reasons for sticking with kOps?
4 Answers
Absolutely! A lot of companies prefer kOps since it means no EKS lock-in and flexibility on upgrades. Some places are just not ready to shift to the latest EKS versions because they like to avoid the upgrade pressure. Also, if you're managing thousands of nodes, kOps can help prevent issues with IP exhaustion in subnets.
My dream for AWS would be having the option to manage IP space more freely, especially for pods.
And don't forget, EKS does allow for custom networking setups now too. You can use IPv6 or dual-stack if that's something you're considering.
There are definitely reasons to run your own Kubernetes control plane in a cloud environment. Some perks include faster deployments, customization of control plane settings, and even cost savings. I've noticed while working on EKS, a good number of folks still prefer to manage Kubernetes without it.
Yeah, kOps is still relevant for a lot of companies. It allows for complete control and helps avoid vendor lock-in. While industry trends are leaning towards managed solutions, understanding kOps is still beneficial for grasping Kubernetes internals.
I see your point about control, but just a heads up: the speed of deployment can vary. Setting up a new cluster via Terraform can take about 40 minutes! If you need zero downtime, consider designing for a hot/cold cluster. The idea that avoiding vendor lock-in is an absolute need is kind of a myth too; you're always going to have to adapt if you switch vendors down the line.
Good news on that front! You can use overlay networks like Cilium or Calico.