Amazon EKS introduces cluster creation flexibility for networking add-ons

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) provides the flexibility to create Kubernetes clusters without the default networking add-ons, enabling you to easily install open source or third party alternative add-ons or self-manage default networking add-ons using any Kubernetes lifecycle management tool.

Every EKS cluster automatically comes with default networking add-ons including Amazon VPC CNI, CoreDNS, and kube-proxy providing critical functionality that enables pod and service operations for EKS clusters. EKS also allows you to bring open source or third party add-ons and tools that manage their lifecycle. With today’s launch, you can skip the installation of default networking add-ons when creating the cluster, making it easier to install alternative add-ons. This also simplifies self-managing default networking add-ons using any lifecycle management tool like Helm or Kustomize, without needing to first remove the Kubernetes manifests of the add-ons from the cluster.