Today Amazon announced Amazon EKS Distro (EKS-D), a new Kubernetes software distribution based on the widely used Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Amazon EKS-D enables enterprises to get reliable and secure Kubernetes clusters using the same validated versions and configurations of Kubernetes and its dependencies, as deployed globally by Amazon EKS. We are excited to announce that the Nirmata Day 2 Kubernetes platform now has integrated support for cluster provisioning and life-cycle management of on-prem enterprise Kubernetes clusters using Amazon EKS-D. 

At Nirmata, a key focus has been on providing consistent and enterprise-grade Kubernetes experiences, independent of where and how Kubernetes is deployed. While Nirmata supports upstream Kubernetes by default, it can also deploy clusters using other certified Kubernetes distributions making it the most flexible enterprise Kubernetes management platform available. 

Earlier this year, based on customer demand, we launched the Nirmata EKS manager for multi-cluster Kubernetes management on Amazon EKS. When the AWS team approached us about Amazon EKS-D, its value for enterprises was immediately apparent to us. Using the same Kubernetes distribution as Amazon EKS, for on-premises clusters, increases operational simplicity and provides enhanced supportability for enterprises.

Each Amazon EKS-D release follows the EKS process, verifying new Kubernetes versions for compatibility. The Amazon EKS-D source code, open-source tooling, binaries, and container images, as well as configuration, are provided for reproducible builds via public Git and S3 storage locations. With Amazon EKS-D, Amazon provides extended support for Kubernetes versions after community support expires, providing updated builds of previous versions including the latest security patches.

As enterprises plan their cloud-native journeys, our goal is to help accelerate this journey by delivering a flexible, easy-to-use, and cost-effective Kubernetes management platform. Adding support for Amazon EKS-D is just another example of how Nirmata delivers the flexibility our enterprise customers need. We are extremely excited about Amazon EKS-D and look forward to partnering with AWS to achieve our shared goals of delighting customers.

Please reach-out to Nirmata here if you have any specific questions on this announcement or on Amazon EKS or Nirmata.