Manage networking add-ons for Amazon EKS clusters - Amazon EKS
Built-in add-onsOptional AWS networking add-ons

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Manage networking add-ons for Amazon EKS clusters

Several networking add-ons are available for your Amazon EKS cluster.

Built-in add-ons

Note

When you create an EKS cluster:

  • Using the AWS Console: The built-in add-ons (like CoreDNS, kube-proxy, etc.) are automatically installed as Amazon EKS Add-ons. These can be easily configured and updated through the AWS Console, CLI, or SDKs.

  • Using other methods (CLI, SDKs, etc.): The same built-in add-ons are installed as self-managed versions that run as regular Kubernetes deployments. These require manual configuration and updates since they can’t be managed through AWS tools.

We recommend using Amazon EKS Add-ons rather than self-managed versions to simplify add-on management and enable centralized configuration and updates through AWS services.

Amazon VPC CNI plugin for Kubernetes

This CNI add-on creates elastic network interfaces and attaches them to your Amazon EC2 nodes. The add-on also assigns a private IPv4 or IPv6 address from your VPC to each Pod and service. This add-on is installed, by default, on your cluster. For more information, see Assign IPs to Pods with the Amazon VPC CNI. If you are using hybrid nodes, the VPC CNI is still installed by default but it is prevented from running on your hybrid nodes with an anti-affinity rule. For more information about your CNI options for hybrid nodes, see Configure a CNI for hybrid nodes.

CoreDNS

CoreDNS is a flexible, extensible DNS server that can serve as the Kubernetes cluster DNS. CoreDNS provides name resolution for all Pods in the cluster. This add-on is installed, by default, on your cluster. For more information, see Manage CoreDNS for DNS in Amazon EKS clusters.

kube-proxy

This add-on maintains network rules on your Amazon EC2 nodes and enables network communication to your Pods. This add-on is installed, by default, on your cluster. For more information, see Manage kube-proxy in Amazon EKS clusters.

Optional AWS networking add-ons

AWS Load Balancer Controller

When you deploy Kubernetes service objects of type loadbalancer, the controller creates AWS Network Load Balancers . When you create Kubernetes ingress objects, the controller creates AWS Application Load Balancers. We recommend using this controller to provision Network Load Balancers, rather than using the legacy Cloud Provider controller built-in to Kubernetes. For more information, see the AWS Load Balancer Controller documentation.

AWS Gateway API Controller

This controller lets you connect services across multiple Kubernetes clusters using the Kubernetes gateway API. The controller connects Kubernetes services running on Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and serverless functions by using the Amazon VPC Lattice service. For more information, see the AWS Gateway API Controller documentation.

For more information about add-ons, see Amazon EKS add-ons.