#kubernetesclusters

Kubernetes cluster visibility may be centralised across AWS regions and accounts using EKS Dashboard.

EKS Dashboard

EKS Dashboard is a new AWS feature. A centralised display allows cluster administrators and cloud architects monitor their Kubernetes clusters organisationally. Its major goal is to give clients a single view of clusters across AWS Regions and accounts. This single view helps track cluster inventories, compliance, operational activity planning, and version updates.

The EKS Dashboard helps companies scale Kubernetes deployments. Multiple clusters are often run for data sovereignty, business continuity, or better availability. This distributed technique makes visibility and control difficult, especially in decentralised systems with several regions and accounts. Clients have traditionally used external products for centralised cluster visibility. Third-party solutions' identification and access setup, licensing costs, and ongoing maintenance added complexity.

The EKS Dashboard simplifies this procedure with native AWS Console dashboard features. It offers data about clusters, regulated node groups, and EKS add-ons. Dashboard insights include cluster health indicators, predicted extended support EKS control plane charges, support status, account, version, and cluster distribution by region. Automatic filtering lets users explore certain data points. This feature makes clusters easier to find and focus on.

A brief tour of the EKS Dashboard shows tabular, graphical, and map representations of Kubernetes clusters. Advanced search and filtering are offered. There are several widgets for cluster visualisation. You can visualise managed node groups by AMI versions, launch templates, and instance type distribution. You can also map your clusters worldwide. Data from the dashboard can be exported for study or custom reports.

Setting up EKS Dashboard

According to reports, EKS Dashboard setup is easy. AWS Organisation management and administrator accounts grant clients access to the EKS interface Dashboard. Turning on trusted access on the organization's Amazon EKS settings page is the only setup requirement. Dashboard settings allow trusted access. The management account can view the Dashboard with trusted access. The official AWS Documentation provides setup and configuration details.

Importantly, the EKS Dashboard is not limited to Amazon EKS clusters. It can also provide visibility into linked Kubernetes clusters on-site or on other cloud providers. Even while hybrid or multi-cloud clusters may have inferior data quality than native Amazon EKS clusters, this functionality provides uniform visibility for enterprises.

Availability

The EKS Dashboard is currently available in the US East (N. Virginia). Use it to integrate data from all commercial AWS Regions. No additional fees apply to the EKS Dashboard.

This new functionality emphasises AWS's commitment to simplifying Kubernetes operations. To let clients focus on app development and growth, infrastructure management is removed.

Google Kubernetes Engine Enterprise

Because Kubernetes is a dynamic, distributed platform with short-lived workloads, maintaining compliance is a changing objective. Moreover, Kubernetes expertise is severely lacking, and compliance standards are often changing.

Google Cloud is thrilled to provide Google Kubernetes Engine Enterprise(GKE Enterprise) clients a feature that will change the game: integrated, fully controlled GKE Compliance within GKE posture management. It is now simpler than ever to achieve and maintain compliance for your Kubernetes clusters.

Google GKE Enterprise

GKE versions

Using Google’s infrastructure, you can build and manage containerized apps with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google’s managed Kubernetes service. It gives you the operational strength of Kubernetes while taking care of a lot of the fundamental parts, such the control plane and nodes.

There are two tiers, or editions, of GKE features: an enterprise tier that has robust tools for controlling, managing, and running containerized workloads at corporate scale, and a regular tier that has all of the fundamental functionality for all GKE customers.

What makes GKE Enterprise unique?

Running a single cluster is typically no longer adequate for enterprises as they adopt cloud-native technologies like containers, container orchestration, and service meshes. Organizations install several clusters for a variety of reasons in order to meet their commercial and technical goals. Keeping production and non-production environments apart, adhering to various regulatory requirements, and setting up services across tiers, locations, or teams are a few examples.

However, there are additional challenges and overhead associated with employing numerous clusters in terms of consistent setup, security, and management. For instance, manually configuring one cluster at a time can be error-prone, and pinpointing the specific location of these faults can be difficult. Big businesses frequently have complicated organizational structures as well, with numerous teams managing, monitoring, and running their workloads across various clusters.

Google Cloud‘s Anthos, a container platform with a number of features for working at enterprise scale, has previously assisted businesses in solving issues similar to this one. The foundation of this platform is the concept of the fleet, which is a logical collection of Kubernetes clusters that may be managed jointly and share namespaces, services, and/or identities for mutual benefit.

You can utilize a wide range of fleet-enabled capabilities thanks to the fleet’s presumed concepts of trust and sameness, which include:

Tools for managing configuration and rules that make it easier for you to operate at scale by automatically adding and changing the same features, configuration, and security guidelines for the whole fleet.

Fleet-wide networking technologies, such as service mesh traffic management tools and Multi Cluster Ingress for applications spanning multiple clusters, assist you in managing traffic throughout your entire fleet.

Features for identity management that assist you in setting up authentication for users and fleet workloads regularly.

Observability capabilities that enable you to keep an eye on and troubleshoot the health, resource usage, and security posture of your fleet clusters and applications.

Service Mesh offers strong tools for networking, observability, and application security for microservice-based apps operating in your fleet.

By completely integrating these features into GKE, GKE Enterprise creates an integrated container platform that further simplifies the adoption of best practices and concepts that have been gleaned from Google’s experience running services.

Moreover, GKE Enterprise offers strong new team management tools. Platform administrators may now more easily assign fleet resources to different teams and provide application teams with individual dashboards and KPIs that are tailored to their specific needs and workloads.

What makes a difference?

You may evaluate your GKE clusters and workloads more quickly and easily by using GKE Compliance to compare them to industry benchmarks, control frameworks, and standards like:

The benchmark for safe GKE settings is the CIS Benchmark for GKE.

To safeguard your workloads, Pod Security Standards (PSS) provide baseline and limited profiles.

You don’t need to bother about developing or purchasing other tools because GKE Compliance is integrated into GKE and is completely controlled by Google. You may concentrate on your business objectives because there is no need for complicated setup or continuous maintenance.

With centralized compliance information updated every 30 minutes, the GKE Compliance dashboard provides you with a comprehensive picture of your fleet of clusters’ compliance status.