Why it matters

EKS is AWS K8s standard. Understanding shapes K8s deployments.

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The architecture

Control plane: managed by AWS.

Data plane: EC2 nodes (self-managed or managed node groups) or Fargate.

EKS architectureControl planemanaged by AWSNode groupsEC2 or FargateIRSAIAM for podsIRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts): standard pattern for pod-level AWS access
EKS components.
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How it works end to end

Managed node groups: AWS provisions + updates EC2 nodes.

Fargate profiles: serverless pods.

IRSA: OIDC-based IAM for K8s service accounts.

Integration: ALB Ingress Controller, EBS CSI driver, etc.