In this edition we feature several key announcements related to Amazon EKS including but not limited to upgrade insights checks, support for community add-ons and support for Bottlerocket FIPS AMIs in Managed Node Groups.

New AWS services and features

• Amazon EKS now enforces upgrade insights checks as part of cluster upgrades

  • EKS upgrade insights automatically scan clusters against a list of potential Kubernetes version upgrade impacting issues such as deprecated Kubernetes API usage.
  • With this new control, EKS will prevent you from upgrading the EKS clusters if there are any Kubernetes version upgrade impacting issues surfaced by EKS upgrade insights.

• Amazon EKS introduces a new catalog of community add-ons

  • To make Kubernetes clusters production-ready, you need to integrate various operational tools and add-ons.
  • With this launch, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) now offers a new catalog of community add-ons that includes metrics-server, kube-state-metrics, cert-manager, prometheus-node-exporter, and external-dns.
  • Each add-on has been packaged, scanned, and validated for compatibility by EKS, with container images securely hosted in an EKS-owned private Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) repository.

• Amazon EKS Adds Support for Bottlerocket FIPS AMIs in Managed Node Groups

  • Bottlerocket is a Linux-based operating system optimized for running containers that follows a minimal, immutable design for enhanced security and performance. The FIPS-enabled Bottlerocket AMIs for EKS include FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic modules and are configured by default to use FIPS-enabled AWS service endpoints, making it easier for customers in regulated industries to run containerized workloads while maintaining compliance with federal standards.
  • With this launch, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) now offers Bottlerocket FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) AMIs for EKS managed node groups.

AWS blogs

• [Blog] AWS recognized as Leader in 2024-25 Omdia Universe for Cloud Container Management & Services

  • Omdia Universe reports are globally recognized as a valuable source of technology analysis and vendor rankings.
  • This blog article is intended to announce that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been recognized as a Leader in the 2024-25 Omdia Universe for Cloud Container Management & Services.

• [Blog] AWS Cloud Credits for Open Source Projects: Affirming Our Commitment

  • Amazon Web Services is proud to reaffirm commitment to providing vital infrastructure for free and open source software projects.
  • This blog highlights committment to an extended $3 million annual commitment to the Kubernetes project, the container orchestration platform which underpins the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS).

• [Blog] Run GenAI inference across environments with Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes

  • Amazon EKS provides a managed Kubernetes control plane, and EKS Hybrid Nodes enables you to join on-premises infrastructure to the Amazon EKS control plane as worker nodes, eliminating the need to manage the Kubernetes control plane for on-premises deployments.
  • This blog article serves as walkthrough guide for using a single EKS cluster to run AI inference on-premises with EKS Hybrid Nodes and in the AWS Cloud with Amazon EKS Auto Mode.

• [Blog] Part 1: Introduction to observing machine learning workloads on Amazon EKS

  • MLOps is a set of practices that aim to streamline the deployment, observability, and maintenance of ML models in production environments.
  • This blog article serves as first part of a four-part series intended to provide overview of MLOps on Amazon EKS.

• [Blog] Amazon EKS introduces node monitoring and auto repair capabilities

  • Node failures can lead to application downtime and necessitate manual intervention from operations teams. EKS node monitoring and auto repair allows customers to automate the identification and replacement of unhealthy nodes.
  • This blog article serves as deep dive walkthrough on using Node Monitoring and Auto Repair within Amazon EKS

• [Blog] Under the hood: Amazon EKS Auto Mode

  • At re:Invent 2024, we launched Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Auto Mode, a new feature that provides a production-ready, Kubernetes conformant cluster that is ready to host your workloads out of the box.
  • This blog article serves as guide to dive deep into under the hood workings of EKS Auto Mode clusters.

• [Blog] Introducing the Amazon EKS Auto Mode workshop

  • This blog article serves as introduction to Amazon EKS Auto Mode hands-on workshop
  • The EKS Auto Mode workshop provides you with the necessary knowledge to deploy a workload to Amazon EKS using Auto Mode, and gain an understanding of how it can streamline the operational overheads of running Kubernetes applications.

Community news and articles

• Deploying the DeepSeek-V3 Model (full version) in Amazon EKS Using vLLM and LWS

  • The article serves as walkthrough tutorial for deploying the 671B parameter DeepSeek-V3 MoE model on Amazon EKS using vLLM and LeaderWorkerSet API (LWS).

• Compiling 70B+ LLMs with NxDI on AWS Trainium using EKS

  • This article explores steps to compile the DeepSeek R1 70B distilled model on a trn1.32xlarge EC2 instance with optimal tensor parallelism and NxDI compilation, while monitoring progress using CloudWatch ContainerInsights.

• EKS Secret Management: Pod Identity & ASCP with Amazon Q CLI

  • This article explores journey of implementing a robust secret management solution for Amazon EKS using Pod Identity and the AWS Secrets and Configuration Provider (ASCP), with Amazon Q Developer as the guide.

• Managing multi-line logs with Fluent Bit and Python

  • This article explores explore the complexities of multi-line logging, why it matters, and how to configure Fluent Bit to capture and manage the same.

Videos and webinars

• Unveiling DevOps at AWS: An Insider’s Perspective

• Let’s talk to Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at AWS

• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 - London

Open source projects

• Cline
  • MetalLB is a Autonomous coding agent right in your IDE, capable of creating/editing files, executing commands, using the browser, and more with your permission every step of the way.