How to build scalable platforms with Amazon EKS (KUB301)

Here's a detailed summary of the key takeaways from the video transcription, broken down into sections for better readability:

The Need for Platforms

  • Platforms are necessary to respond to the ever-changing needs of technology and help adapt to massive shifts like the internet, smartphones, and the scaling of applications and infrastructure.
  • Platforms help provide automation, governance, and control over the increasing complexity of modern applications and infrastructure.
  • However, many platforms fail to be adopted by developers due to a lack of trust.

Building Trust in Platforms

  • Trust is the key to platform adoption and success, consisting of three main components:
    1. Logic - Demonstrating rigor and transparency in the platform's design and operation.
    2. Authenticity - Fostering a collaborative, shared responsibility mindset.
    3. Empathy - Prioritizing reliability and meeting developer needs.
  • The challenge is balancing the need to scale platforms while maintaining high levels of trust.

Automating Platform Scalability

  • Platform teams often focus on automating individual components, but the real bottleneck is the human interaction and communication between teams.
  • Meetings, tickets, and manual approvals slow down the ability to deliver new platform capabilities to developers.

Leveraging Kubernetes as a Platform

  • Kubernetes can be used as a foundational platform, providing built-in capabilities like API management, authentication, and continuous compliance.
  • By using Kubernetes as a framework, platform teams can expose platform capabilities as APIs, enabling self-service and reducing the need for human interaction.
  • Kubernetes also provides a rich ecosystem of open-source controllers and tools that can be leveraged to build scalable, composable platform capabilities.

Fostering Collaboration and Transparency

  • Platform teams should adopt a product mindset, continuously gathering feedback from developers and prioritizing the most important capabilities.
  • By using open-source tools and embracing a GitOps approach, platform teams can increase transparency and enable broader collaboration across the organization.
  • Delegating infrastructure management to managed services like Amazon EKS can free up platform teams to focus on building trustworthy, scalable platform capabilities.

Real-World Example: Adobe's Ethos Platform

  • Adobe's Ethos platform demonstrates how these principles can be applied in practice:
    • Ethos abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure, observability, and compliance, allowing developers to focus on delivering their applications.
    • Ethos embraces a product mindset, with platform engineers acting as customer advocates and holding themselves accountable to service-level objectives.
    • Ethos leverages open-source tools and a GitOps approach to increase transparency and enable broader collaboration.
    • The outcomes include faster developer onboarding, reduced incidents, and improved cost efficiency.

Resources and Next Steps

  • Check out the Cano open-source community for an opinionated, open-source platform based on Kubernetes.
  • Explore other related sessions and resources, such as the EKS training and new Kubernetes feature announcements.

Your Digital Journey deserves a great story.

Build one with us.

Cookies Icon

These cookies are used to collect information about how you interact with this website and allow us to remember you. We use this information to improve and customize your browsing experience, as well as for analytics.

If you decline, your information won’t be tracked when you visit this website. A single cookie will be used in your browser to remember your preference.

Talk to us