Hosted Kubernetes

Most of the major cloud platforms now offer their own hosted Kubernetes services. In this model, the control plane (masters) components are managed by your cloud platform. For example, your cloud provider makes sure the control plane is highly available, performant, and handles all control plane upgrades. On the flip side, you have less control over versions and have limited options to customize.

Irrespective of pros and cons, hosted Kubernetes services are as close to zero-effort production-grade Kubernetes as you will get. In fact, the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) lets you deploy a production-grade Kubernetes cluster and the Istio service mesh with just a few simple clicks. Other clouds offer similar services:

• AWS: Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
• Azure: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Linode: Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE)
• DigitalOcean: DigitalOcean Kubernetes
• IBM Cloud: IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
• Google Cloud Platform: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

With these offerings in mind, ask yourself the following question before building your own Kubernetes cluster: Is building and managing your own Kubernetes cluster the best use of your time and other resources? If the answer isn’t “Hell yes”, I strongly suggest you consider a hosted service.