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Amazon Web Services announced the general availability of its Amazon EKS Anywhere service. The service is an extension of the managed Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services which allows users to run Kubernetes on AWS without having to install, operate, and maintain a Kubernetes control plane or nodes.

Amazon EKS Anywhere allows customers to create and run Kubernetes clusters on-premises using VMware’s vSphere. The offering comes with an installable software package to create and operate Kubernetes, as well as automation tools to support your cluster’s lifecycle.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform used to automate application deployment, scaling, and management. Containers help developers package code in a way that makes running apps reliably in different computing environments possible.

Amazon announced EKS Anywhere during the AWS re: Invent in December. The company said the service should make it easier to buy or build management tooling to create Kubernetes clusters, configure the environment and update the software.

The service is similar to Google’s Anthos and Microsoft Azure’s Arc. They provide companies with a single tool to manage their app containers across different clouds and on-premises data centers.

Run Kubernetes on premise and on AWS from one console

When it was first announced, analysts said Amazon EKS Anywhere was a hybrid cloud play by the eCommerce giant. Former AWS Chief Executive and now Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy said in December that companies “still have a lot of containers that they need to run on-premises” while making the transition to the cloud.

He added that they aimed for the same management and deployment mechanisms present in AWS on-premises. So, the customers “asked” the company to work on this.

Users can access the Amazon EKS console to see their Kube clusters and integrate additional cloud products and services needed, as well as third-party networking and security tools.