Comparing the managed services
| Area | Amazon EKS | Azure AKS | Google GKE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hands-off mode | EKS Auto Mode, Fargate | AKS Automatic | GKE Autopilot |
| Node autoscaling | Karpenter | Node autoprovisioning | Cluster autoscaler, NAP |
| Workload identity | EKS Pod Identity / IRSA | Entra Workload ID | Workload Identity Federation |
| Native security | GuardDuty EKS protection | Defender for Containers | GKE Security Posture |
Cluster design decisions
Tenancy
Separate production and non-production clusters; use namespaces, quotas and network policies for team isolation.
Networking
Plan pod IP ranges early, use private control planes and route ingress through a managed gateway with WAF.
Delivery
Deploy through GitOps with Argo CD or Flux so every cluster change is reviewed and auditable.
Upgrades
Follow a regular minor-version cadence, test in staging and use surge or blue-green node pool upgrades.
Security hardening checklist
- Enforce Pod Security Standards at the restricted level for application namespaces.
- Apply policy-as-code with Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper for images, labels and privileges.
- Scan images with Trivy or Grype and allow only signed images from approved registries.
- Use workload identity instead of long-lived cloud keys in secrets.
- Default-deny network policies, then allow only required service traffic.
- Detect runtime threats with Falco or the provider's container protection.
Observability and cost
Collect metrics with Prometheus, logs with a central pipeline and traces with OpenTelemetry. Set service-level objectives for key services. For cost, set accurate requests and limits, use spot capacity for tolerant workloads, and allocate spend per namespace with tools such as OpenCost or Kubecost.
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