Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) allows you to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications using Kubernetes AWS infrastructure. Features of EKS is its ability to automatically manage and scale the worker nodes in a cluster. In this article, we will explore the autoscaling capabilities of EKS Managed Node Groups and how to configure them.
EKS Managed Node Group
EKS Managed Node Group launches and manages a group of EC2 instances, providing compute resources for your Kubernetes workloads. You do not need to manually provision or manage these instances as they are handled by EKS.. EKS advantages over self-managed worker nodes, including simplified setup and support for EKS-specific features like IAM roles for service accounts.
Autoscaling with EKS Managed Node Groups
EKS Managed Node Group autoscaling automatically scales worker nodes based on application resource needs. Autoscaling ensures that your cluster has enough capacity to handle the current workload without over-provisioning.
EKS Managed Node Groups support two types of autoscaling:
Cluster Autoscaling and Horizontal Pod Autoscaling. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
Cluster Autoscaling
The Cluster Autoscaling is a Kubernetes component that automatically adjusts the size of the worker node pool based on the resource utilization of the cluster. It ensures that there are enough nodes to accommodate the pods in the cluster and scales up or down as needed.
To enable Cluster Autoscaling for an EKS Managed Node Group, configure the autoscaling group associated with the node group. This can be done by the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI. Here’s an example of how to enable Cluster Autoscaler using the AWS CLI:
Where the `autoscaling-config.json` file contains the autoscaling configuration for the node group:
This configuration specifies that Cluster Autoscaling should enable for the my-node-group with a minimum size of 1 node and a maximum size of 10 nodes. The autoscaling will automatically adjust the size of the node group based on the CPU and memory utilization.
Horizontal Pod Autoscaling
This is the another Kubernetes component that automatically adjusts the number of replicas. It ensures that there are enough pod replicas to handle the incoming traffic and scales up or down as needed.
To enable Horizontal Pod Autoscaling for a deployment in an EKS cluster, you need to create a Horizontal Pod Autoscaling resource using a manifest file. Here’s an example of how to configure Horizontal Pod Autoscaling for a deployment:
This specifies that the Horizontal Pod Autoscaling should monitor the CPU utilization of the pods in the `my-deployment` deployment. The autoscaler will aim to maintain an average CPU utilization of 50%.
Conclusion
EKS Managed Node Group autoscaling provide a powerful and convenient way to manage the worker nodes in your EKS clusters. With the built-in autoscaling capabilities, you can ensure that your cluster has the right amount of capacity to handle your workloads efficiently, while minimizing costs. By combining Cluster Autoscaling and Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, you can achieve dynamic scaling both at the cluster level and at the deployment level.
This allows your EKS clusters to adapt to changing resource requirements and traffic patterns, providing a highly scalable and cost-effective environment for your containerized applications. Additionally, implement Pod Disruption Budgets EKS ensures that during disruptive events, such as node scaling activities or maintenance, a minimum number of Pods are maintained, thereby enhancing the availability and stability of your applications.
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