In this edition we feature several key announcements to Amazon EKS including but not limited to support for Kubernetes v1.32, extended support for versions for EKS Anywhere, default encryption of API data, Codepipeline support for native deployments and Bottlerocket enhancements.

Important Announcement

AWS is coming to London for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 !

Join us at KubeCon London at Booth S300. AWS’ presence at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 will feature expert-led sessions, hands-on workshops, and the latest in Kubernetes innovations. Check the link for complete schedule of AWS activities and to plan your KubeCon experience.

New AWS services and features

• Amazon EKS and Amazon EKS Distro now supports Kubernetes version 1.32

  • Kubernetes version 1.32 introduces several improvements including stable support for custom resource field selectors and auto removal of persistent volume claims created by stateful sets.
  • With this support, you can now use Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon EKS Distro to run Kubernetes version 1.32 clusters.

• Amazon EKS now envelope encrypts all Kubernetes API data by default

  • Until now Amazon EKS provided optional envelope encryption with Kubernetes KMS provider v1.
  • With this launch, now Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) enables default envelope encryption for all Kubernetes API data in EKS clusters running Kubernetes version 1.28 or higher.
  • Using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) with Kubernetes KMS provider v2, EKS now provides an additional layer of security with an AWS owned, KMS encryption key or the option of bringing your own key.

• AWS CodePipeline adds native Amazon EKS deployment support

  • AWS CodePipeline introduces a new action to deploy to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). This action enables you to easily deploy your container applications to your EKS clusters, including those in private VPCs.
  • With this launch, operational overhead of having to maintain a compute environment with private network to deploy to EKS Cluster is reduced.

• Amazon EMR on EKS now supports Amazon EKS Pod Identity

  • To run workloads on Amazon EMR on EKS, customers need to create a job execution IAM role that pods in EKS cluster will use to interact with other AWS resources such as Amazon S3 buckets.
  • With this launch, you can configure IAM permissions through a single API call, significantly reducing complexity and potential for errors.
  • The new feature also allows you to leverage IAM roles across multiple clusters without the need to update IAM trust policies for use in new clusters, improving reusability and operational efficiency.

• Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus collector adds support for cross-account ingestion

  • For centralized observability, previously you had to run, scale, and patch telemetry agents yourself to scrape metrics from Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service clusters in various accounts in order to ingest them into a central Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus workspaces in a different account.
  • With this launch, you can now use the Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus collector to get rid of this heavy lifting and ingest metrics in a cross-account setup without having to self-run a collector.

• Announcing extended support for Kubernetes versions for Amazon EKS Anywhere

  • Standard support begins when a Kubernetes version becomes available in Amazon EKS Anywhere, and continues for 14 months - the same as the upstream Kubernetes project support window.
  • With this launch, Amazon EKS Anywhere continues to include patches for Kubernetes versions for an additional 12 months, providing flexibility for cluster administrators to plan Kubernetes upgrades.

• Bottlerocket now supports NVIDIA Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) for Kubernetes workloads

  • NVIDIA’s Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) feature allows system administrators to maximize GPU resource utilization by running multiple workloads simultaneously on a single GPU while maintaining hardware-level isolation between workloads.
  • With this launch, Bottlerocket, the Linux-based operating system purpose-built for containers, now supports NVIDIA’s Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) feature, essential for workloads such as machine learning inference tasks.

• Bottlerocket now supports AWS Neuron accelerated instance types

  • With this launch, Bottlerocket, the Linux-based operating system purpose-built for containers, now supports AWS Neuron-powered instances with its Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) AMIs.
  • Customers using Bottlerocket AMIs can now deploy and manage machine learning inference and training workloads on AWS Neuron accelerated instance types, including Inf1, Inf2, Trn1, and Trn2.

• Bottlerocket simplifies system setup with default bootstrap container image

  • Bootstrap containers are special-purpose containers that handle pre-startup operations such as directory creation, environment variable setup, and node-specific configurations before the main application containers start.
  • With this launch, Bottlerocket now provides a default bootstrap container image that simplifies system setup tasks, eliminating the need for most customers to maintain their own container images for initial configuration.

AWS blogs

• [Blog] A deep dive into Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes

  • EKS Hybrid Nodes removes that complexity and overhead by allowing users to connect their existing on-premises and edge capacity as nodes to a managed Amazon EKS control plane in the cloud.
  • This blog article serves as comprehensive deep dive guide and walkthrough on how to create a hybrid nodes-enabled EKS Cluster and connect hybrid nodes to run applications.

• [Blog] End of support notifications and enhanced discoverability for Amazon EKS

  • Proactive monitoring of EKS cluster lifecycles and end of support is crucial to making sure of the security, stability, and compliance of Kubernetes deployments.
  • The blog article serves as guide in leveraging AWS Health, Amazon EventBridge, Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS to accomplish end of support notifications and enhanced reporting for Amazon EKS Clusters.

• [Blog] Deploying a Statistical Compute Environment using R on Amazon EKS

  • As clinical trials become more complex – both in terms of therapeutic areas and treatment modalities, pharma customers are looking at statistical computing environments(SCE) to simplify process of accessing clinical trail data throughout drug development lifecycle.
  • This blog article servers as guide in understanding process of deploying a Statistical Compute Environment using R on Amazon EKS

Community news and articles

• Hosting DeepSeek-R1 on Amazon EKS

  • The article serves as walkthrough tutorial for hosting Deepseek-R1 model on Amazon EKS using Amazon EKS Auto Mode for the flexibility and scalability that it provides.

• Kubernetes Troubleshooting: A Step-by-Step Guide

  • This article explores discuss the most common Kubernetes errors and solutions for them.

• How to monitor high resource usage in Amazon EKS

  • This article explores key metrics that can aid in monitoring and troubleshooting high resource usage om EKS to ensure performance, cost efficiency, and cluster stability.

Videos and webinars

• AWS at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon ‘25 London | ft. Kelsey Hightower and Hands-on Workshop

• Simplify Service Connectivity with Amazon VPC Lattice + EKS

Open source projects

• MetalLB
  • MetalLB is a load-balancer implementation for bare metal Kubernetes clusters, using standard routing protocols.