Feature comparison
Ever wondered which cloud provider offers the top managed Kubernetes service? Kubernetes has emerged as the preferred container orchestrator for enterprises, mainly because of its portability - you can run the same application on-premises and in the cloud.
Managed Kubernetes solutions are used by the software teams that want to focus on developing, deploying, and optimizing their workloads without the hassle of cluster management. Managing and configuring clusters is complex, time-consuming, and demands proficient Kubernetes administration, especially in production environments.
To ease these challenges, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud offer managed Kubernetes services. But what sets them apart?
Both Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) allow you to run Kubernetes without worrying about the control plane’s management. They are CNCF conformant, support the latest Kubernetes versions, and offer features like auto-scaling, node auto-repair, and node auto-provisioning.
When it comes to the Kubernetes service itself, both deploy and maintain the control plane for you. This means you only need to focus on the nodes, allowing you to concentrate more on your applications.
Amazon EKS was AWS’s response to the growing demand for Kubernetes on their infrastructure. While AWS provides a solid foundation and a vast ecosystem, EKS started slightly later than GKE and might not always feature the most up-to-date Kubernetes advancements compared to GKE.
Integration with AWS: EKS integrates seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem, letting you leverage services like Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and AWS IAM. This integration enhances your applications’ functionality within the AWS environment.
Flexible Cluster Management: EKS offers greater control over the Kubernetes control plane, allowing you to tailor and fine-tune configurations to meet your specific requirements. This flexibility helps you adapt cluster management to suit your unique operational needs.
Spot Instances: EKS supports creating and managing Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, leading to substantial cost savings - potentially up to 90% compared to on-demand prices. Spot Instances are ideal for fault-tolerant workloads and can boost cost efficiency without compromising performance or availability.
Ecosystem and Marketplace: AWS boasts a vast ecosystem and marketplace, offering a wide array of third-party tools and services that can be integrated into EKS clusters. This rich ecosystem broadens your possibilities, enabling you to enhance your Kubernetes workloads’ functionality and versatility.
Developed by Google - a pioneer in container orchestration technology - GKE is considered highly reliable, well-optimized, and packed with cutting-edge Kubernetes features. Google’s significant contributions to the Kubernetes open-source project shine through in GKE.
Integration with Google Cloud: If you’re already invested in the Google Cloud platform, GKE is a natural fit. It integrates effortlessly with Google Cloud services like Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Cloud Pub/Sub, enhancing your cloud-native applications’ versatility and capabilities.
Managed Control Plane: GKE takes on the responsibility of managing the Kubernetes control plane, ensuring high availability and scalability. This lifts the operational burdens associated with cluster management, allowing you to focus on optimizing your applications.
Autoscaling and Load Balancing: GKE offers dependable autoscaling capabilities that automatically adjust the node count based on resource utilization. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with Google Cloud load balancers, improving traffic distribution efficiency and boosting your applications’ reliability and performance.
Security: Security is a top priority with GKE. It provides automatic node upgrades to keep your infrastructure up-to-date, integrated identity and access management to control user privileges, and support for private clusters to safeguard your critical workloads and data.
To choose wisely, consider your project’s unique needs, your familiarity with the respective cloud providers, and the level of control you desire. Both GKE and EKS offer reliable managed Kubernetes solutions, allowing you to focus on deploying and scaling containerized applications while minimizing the complexities of managing the underlying infrastructure.
| Features |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
Pricing ModelAll three services operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, ensuring cost efficiency, especially for workloads with fluctuating resource demands. | Charges $0.10 per hour ($72 per month) for each Kubernetes cluster you create, plus the cost for worker nodes. | Also charges a cluster management fee of $0.10 per hour per cluster. One cluster per region per billing account is free of charge. | Cloudfleet offers multiple tiers for the control plane - always free for single-AZ deployments and a highly available tier for $69 per month. |
Kubernetes Version ControlThis refers to your ability to control the Kubernetes version running on your cluster. | Supports three or more minor Kubernetes version releases, excluding the most recent release. Upgrades have to be done manually. | Offers a wide variety of release versions depending on the release channel you select - stable, regular, or rapid. | Follows the official Kubernetes skew policy and allows users to roll out upgrades manually or automatically based on the selected release channel. |
Auto-Scaling and Node Auto-RepairAutomatically adjusts the number of nodes in a node pool based on workload. | Provides auto-scaling but requires some manual configuration. It’s not enabled by default. | Offers a highly automated solution. You just specify the VM size and the range of nodes in the node pool, and Google Cloud handles the rest. | Doesn’t require any manual configuration and will automatically add nodes to the cluster based on demand. Failed nodes are automatically recreated. |
Node Auto-ProvisioningAutomatically adds nodes to the cluster when needed. | Does not have node auto-provisioning out of the box. Users need to deploy and maintain an instance of self-managed Karpenter. | In Autopilot mode, GKE offers a hands-off experience. It manages the provisioning and optimization of the cluster and its node pools. | Comes with auto-scaling and auto-provisioning built-in. |
Hybrid SupportAbility to deploy nodes both on-premises and in the cloud. | Offers Amazon EKS Anywhere, enabling businesses to deploy Kubernetes clusters on their own infrastructure (using VMware vSphere) while being supported by AWS automated cluster management (1-year term at $24,000 per cluster). | Google Cloud Anthos lets you run GKE on-premises - either on bare metal servers or on top of VMware - as well as on Google or other public clouds. Pricing options include pay-as-you-go and subscription models ($6 per vCPU per month on Google Cloud and AWS, and $50 on-premises). | All CFKE clusters are hybrid by design and can accept nodes from any cloud provider or on-premises environment. Connected and self-managed nodes are priced at $4.95 per vCPU core per month. |
Multi-Cloud SupportAbility to provision nodes across multiple cloud providers. | Not supported. | Not supported. | Both Cloudfleet Managed and Connected Fleets support over 12 cloud providers within the same cluster. |
Multi-Region ClustersAbility to deploy nodes in one cluster across multiple regions. | Not supported. | Not supported. | Even within a single cloud provider, CFKE can deploy nodes in multiple regions. |
Spot Instances FailoverAbility to seamlessly move workloads between spot and on-demand instances based on current availability. | Not supported. | Not supported. | When Spot or Preemptible instances are terminated, CFKE automatically moves workloads to on-demand or other types of spot instances. |
CFKE vs EKS vs GKE
Cloudfleet Kubernetes Engine (CFKE) is a next-generation managed Kubernetes service that offers a simplified and cost-effective solution for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications. Designed to streamline Kubernetes cluster deployment and management, CFKE provides a seamless and efficient experience for software teams. By leveraging CFKE, you can focus on developing and optimizing your applications while it handles the complexities of cluster management and infrastructure provisioning.
By utilizing a state-of-the-art technology stack, CFKE enables unique use cases and removes the need to operate the cluster or manage cluster federation.
Whether you’re looking to optimize costs, simplify cluster management, or build new products, CFKE fits perfectly into your existing stack.
User management and access control are built-in, and you can easily integrate with your existing identity provider. CFKE also provides comprehensive monitoring and logging tools, giving you insights into your applications’ performance and health.
CFKE handles the provisioning and scaling of the Kubernetes control plane - including API servers and the backend persistence layer - across different cloud providers, regions, and availability zones. This ensures high availability and fault tolerance. It automatically detects and replaces unhealthy control plane nodes, applies patches, and provides serverless compute for containers, eliminating the need to manage servers manually. You pay only for the resources your applications use, while also benefiting from enhanced security through application isolation by design.
Getting started with Cloudfleet is easy, and you can begin with our free tier that covers control plane deployments. It allows you to use cloud infrastructure from both Cloudfleet and customer-managed cloud provider accounts, as well as self-managed on-premises nodes.
Comprehensive support for major cloud providers and regions, ready for multi-cloud deployments.
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High availability is included in the open-source feature set, ensuring reliability for mission-critical applications.
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