Managed Kubernetes platforms — Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE — remove the operational burden of running the Kubernetes control plane, letting teams focus on workloads instead of infrastructure. Each cloud provider wraps vanilla Kubernetes with distinct networking models, autoscaling strategies, identity integrations, and fully-managed tiers such as GKE Autopilot, AKS Automatic, and EKS Auto Mode. Kubernetes 1.33 "Octarine" brings in-place pod resizing to GA, while Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) — stable in 1.35 — unlocks structured GPU scheduling beyond the legacy nvidia.com/gpu extended-resource model. The Gateway API has graduated to GA and now supersedes Ingress for new clusters, following Ingress-NGINX's retirement in March 2026.
What This Cheat Sheet Covers
This topic spans 16 focused tables and 187 indexed concepts, 150 flashcards. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.
A jump-to index of every table row in this cheat sheet.
An interactive map of every table and concept in this topic.
Table 1: Platform Comparison (EKS, AKS, GKE)
Understanding the pricing model, default CNI, and managed-tier options of each platform before designing a cluster prevents costly surprises. AKS offers a three-tier control-plane pricing model; GKE gives a monthly zonal credit; EKS charges separately for Auto Mode node management.
| Platform | Example | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
eksctl create cluster --name prod --region us-east-1 | • Control plane: $0.10/hr (standard, first 14 months per version) • Extended support: $0.60/hr (months 15–26 after release) • Workers: separate EC2/Fargate cost; CNI: AWS VPC CNI | ||
az aks create -g rg -n prod --tier standard | • Free tier: no SLA, ≤10 nodes recommended • Standard: $0.10/hr, 99.95% SLA • Premium: $0.60/hr, 24-month LTS, 99.95% SLA; CNI default: Azure CNI Overlay | ||
gcloud container clusters create prod --region us-central1 | • Standard: $0.10/hr per cluster (one free zonal cluster / $74.40/month credit) • Autopilot: pay-per-pod; Dataplane V2 eBPF default for Autopilot | ||
gcloud container clusters create-auto autopilot-prod | • Fully-managed node pools • GKE handles all node operations • billed per vCPU/memory/storage of running pods | ||
kubectl apply -f fargate-profile.yaml | • Serverless pods — no EC2 nodes • billed per vCPU and memory per second • use for burst or compliance workloads | ||
eksctl create cluster --auto-mode | • EKS manages compute, networking, and storage automatically using Karpenter • +12% surcharge on EC2 on-demand price; immutable Bottlerocket nodes, 21-day max lifetime; no SSH/SSM | ||
az aks create -g rg -n prod --sku automatic | • Microsoft-managed node provisioning, security defaults, and monitoring • 99.9% pod readiness SLA • built on AKS NAP and Azure Policy | ||
az aks enable-addons --addons virtual-node | • Burst to Azure Container Instances (ACI) for serverless pods • backed by ACI, not EC2 nodes | ||
Multi-AZ by default on EKS/AKS/GKE | • All three managed platforms run the API server across multiple AZs automatically • no user config needed | ||
Amazon Linux 2023, Bottlerocket, Ubuntu, Windows | • EKS: AL2023, Bottlerocket (EKS Auto Mode only), Ubuntu, Windows • AKS: Ubuntu, Azure Linux, Windows • GKE: Container-Optimized OS, Ubuntu |