GKE vs EKS
As cloud technology has become more accessible, many businesses are migrating from their in-house servers to cloud-based solutions. One of the major areas of interest is Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration system. Both Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) are popular options for hosting your Kubernetes environment. In this post, we'll compare GKE and EKS in various areas to help you decide which one is right for your business.
Managed Services
Both GKE and EKS are managed services that provide a managed Kubernetes environment. This means they take care of setting up and maintaining the Kubernetes master nodes, as well as providing additional tools to deploy and manage your applications.
However, it’s worth noting that while GKE is a fully managed service, EKS requires a bit more management. For example, setting up the Kubernetes master nodes is not included in the EKS service, and the user must set it up on their own.
Scalability
Both GKE and EKS offer impressive scalability options. GKE can create more than 5000 nodes per cluster with up to 15,000 pods. EKS, on the other hand, can support up to 5000 nodes per cluster, but with a limit of 150 pods per node, which means it can support up to 750,000 pods per cluster.
Pricing
Pricing is an important consideration for Kubernetes hosting services. The cost of a service can vary depending on the use case and the features required.
GKE offers a flexible pricing plan, based on the user's resource usage. They also offer a free usage tier of 1 node with 1 vCPU and 3.75 GB memory. On the other hand, EKS provides pricing models on the number of workers you’ve created, and a different amount of infrastructure required.
Security
In terms of security, both services offer multiple features to secure the Kubernetes environment. Both offer a private control plane and node-to-node encryption. However, EKS supports additional features, including IAM roles for service accounts, and AWS KMS for encryption.
Availability
Both GKE and EKS provide high availability for the Kubernetes cluster by placing nodes into different availability zones. GKE offers automatic repair of nodes for a quicker recovery time in case of a failure. EKS, on the other hand, doesn't have this feature.
Conclusion
Overall, both GKE and EKS are strong options for Kubernetes hosting services. The choice between the two comes down to the specific needs of your project.
If you’re looking for a fully managed service with easy deployment and scalability, GKE may be the right option for you. On the other hand, if you want more control over Kubernetes master nodes, EKS is the better choice, but keep in mind that the tradeoff is that you need to manage more of the environment by yourself.
We hope this blog post has provided an unbiased and informative comparison between GKE and EKS. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.