AWS EKS

Question 1

What is AWS EKS?

Answer 1

AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that makes it easy to run Kubernetes clusters on AWS without installing or managing your own Kubernetes control plane.

Question 2

What are the main components of an EKS cluster?

Answer 2

1. Control Plane (managed by AWS)
2. Worker Nodes (EC2 or Fargate)
3. Networking (VPC, subnets, security groups)
4. IAM roles and policies
5. Add-ons (like VPC CNI Core DNS kube-proxy) .

Question 3

Who manages the Kubernetes control plane in EKS?

Answer 3

AWS fully manages the control plane including the API server and control plane nodes .

Question 4

Can you run EKS worker nodes on Fargate?

Answer 4

Yes. EKS supports AWS Fargate for serverless compute allowing pods to run without managing EC2 instances.

Question 5

What networking plugin does EKS use by default?

Answer 5

AWS VPC CNI plugin which allows Kubernetes pods to have native VPC IP addresses.

Question 6

How do you connect to an EKS cluster from your local machine?

Answer 6

Using kubectl and the aws EKS update-kubeconfig command to configure kubeconfig with cluster details.

Question 7

What IAM roles are required in EKS?

Answer 7

1. EKS Cluster Role (for control plane)
2. Node Instance Role (for EC2 worker nodes)
3. ServiceAccount roles for pods (optional).

Question 8

How do you upgrade an EKS cluster?

Answer 8

EKS provides managed upgrades for control plane.
Worker nodes must be updated separately.

Question 9

What is the difference between EKS Managed Node Groups and self-managed nodes?

Answer 9

Managed Node Groups: AWS provisions and manages EC2 nodes automatically.
Self-managed: You manually manage EC2 instances and the node lifecycle.

Question 10

How do you enable logging for an EKS cluster?

Answer 10

Enable Amazon CloudWatch
Container Insights
EKS control plane logging (API audit authenticator scheduler).

Question 11

What is the maximum number of nodes supported in an EKS cluster?

Answer 11

Default limit: 1000 nodes per cluster (can be increased via AWS support)

Question 12

How does EKS handle high availability?

Answer 12

Control plane runs in multiple AZs automatically.
Worker nodes can be deployed across multiple AZs for HA

Question 13

Can EKS run on-premises?

Answer 13

Not directly.
Use EKS Anywhere for running Kubernetes clusters on-premises with EKS-compatible tooling

Question 14

What are some common EKS add-ons?

Answer 14

1. CoreDNS
2. kube-proxy
3. VPC CNI
4. Amazon EBS CSI driver
5. Amazon EFS CSI driver

Question 15

How do you integrate EKS with AWS IAM for pods?

Answer 15

Using IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) to assign fine-grained IAM permissions to Kubernetes pods

Question 16

What is the difference between EKS Standard and EKS Fargate profiles?

Answer 16

Standard: runs on EC2 nodes.
Fargate profile: runs on serverless Fargate pods automatically scheduled in subnets

Question 17

What is the default Kubernetes version in EKS?

Answer 17

AWS maintains support for multiple versions.
Usually the latest 3 versions are supported for upgrades

Question 18

How do you manage secrets in EKS?

Answer 18

Use Kubernetes Secrets or integrate with AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store

Question 19

How does EKS integrate with CI/CD?

Answer 19

Use:

CodePipeline
CodeBuild
GitHub Actions
or Jenkins to deploy containerized workloads to EKS

Question 20

How do you monitor EKS clusters?

Answer 20

Use:

Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudTrail
Prometheus/Grafana
or Container Insights

Question 21

How does EKS handle cluster autoscaling?

Answer 21

Using:

Cluster Autoscaler for EC2 nodes.
Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) for scaling pods based on CPU/memory metrics.

Question 22

How do you secure EKS clusters?

Answer 22

1. Use IAM for access control
2. Enable RBAC in Kubernetes
3. Network policies
4. Pod security policies
5. Encryption at rest and in transit

Question 23

What is the difference between Kubernetes Deployment and EKS Managed Node Group?

Answer 23

Deployment manages pods and replicas inside the cluster.
Node Group manages the underlying EC2 worker nodes running pods.

Question 24

Can EKS integrate with load balancers?

Answer 24

Yes. EKS supports AWS Fargate for serverless compute allowing pods to run without managing EC2 instances.

Question 25

What storage options are available in EKS?

Answer 25

1. Amazon EBS 2. Amazon EFS 3. Amazon FSx 4. S3 via CSI driver 5. Local storage (ephemeral)

Question 26

Which service allows you to run EKS pods without managing EC2 instances? A) EC2 Auto Scaling B) Fargate C) Lambda D) Elastic Beanstalk

Answer 26

B) Fargate

Question 27

How do you provide IAM permissions to pods in EKS? A) Node IAM Role B) ClusterRoleBinding C) IAM Role for Service Account D) Security Group

Answer 27

C) IAM Role for Service Account

Question 28

What networking plugin gives pods native VPC IP addresses? A) Calico B) Flannel C) AWS VPC CNI D) Cilium

Answer 28

C) AWS VPC CNI

Question 29

Who is responsible for patching the EKS control plane? A) User B) AWS C) Both D) CloudFormation

Answer 29

B) AWS

Question 30

How many availability zones does EKS control plane run in? A) 1 B) 2 C) 3 D) All AZs in region

Answer 30

C) 3

Question 31

Which logging service is used for EKS control plane logs? A) CloudTrail B) CloudWatch C) S3 D) DynamoDB

Answer 31

B) CloudWatch