Amazon EKS managed node groups introduces new update strategies

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) now offers new update strategies for managed node groups, giving you control over how Amazon EC2 instances in your clusters are updated with new configurations or for new Kubernetes versions. This feature provides flexibility to make changes to your Amazon EKS cluster nodes in a way that best suits your use case, while reducing operational overhead and compute costs.

Amazon EKS managed node group update strategies let you choose between the current EKS managed node group update behavior, Default, and a new strategy, Minimal Capacity, that attempts to update the managed node group by launching fewer new EC2 instances compared to the Default strategy. Minimal Capacity is useful for managed node groups that have been scaled to zero, are using EC2 instances in high demand, or instances with limited availability. This is especially beneficial, for example, if your managed node groups have GPU-accelerated instances or instances purchased using a capacity reservation like Reserved Instances. By default, both existing and new EKS managed node groups use the “Default” update strategy, which updates managed node groups in the same way as before this launch.

EKS managed node group update strategies is available today at no additional cost in all AWS Regions, except AWS GovCloud (US) and China Regions.

To learn more and get started, visit the Amazon EKS product page or Amazon EKS User Guide for managed node groups.