Match Made On-Premises: Dell and AWS EKS Anywhere

By Chad Dunn, VP, product management HCI, CI and software defined storage, Dell Technologies, Inc.

Dell Technologies, Inc. and Amazon announced that Amazon EKS Anywhere has been validated on Dell EMC VxRail HCI and PowerStore storage systems.

VxRail appliances

EKS Anywhere is a new deployment option for Amazon EKS that enables customers to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises while allowing for connectivity and portability to public cloud environments.

PowerStore appliance

Dell collaborates with a broad ecosystem of public cloud providers to help our customers support multi-cloud environments that help place the right data and applications where it makes the most sense for them. Deploying EKS Anywhere on Dell infrastructure streamlines application development and delivery by allowing organizations to create and manage on premises Kubernetes clusters.

Across nearly all industries, IT organizations are moving to a more developer-oriented model that requires automated processes, rapid resource delivery and reliable infrastructure. In order to drive operational simplicity through Kubernetes orchestration, Amazon EKS Anywhere helps customers to automate cluster management, reduce support costs, and eliminate the redundant effort of using multiple open source or 3rd party tools for operating Kubernetes clusters. Dell infrastructure intelligence and automation streamlines operations, reducing downtime by 92% and making IT infrastructure teams over 68% more efficient. ⁽¹⁾ The combination of automated Kubernetes cluster management with intelligent, automated infrastructure is truly a match made on-premises allowing IT organizations to provide infrastructure as code and empower their DevOps teams to be the innovation engine for their businesses.

This announcement includes certification of 2 infrastructure configurations based on our fully curated and turnkey VxRail HCI system. The VxRail advantage is based on VxRail HCI system software which provides end to end orchestration and automation for all day to day operations and single click, HCI stack lifecycle management for ease of operations. Customers can run traditional and cloud native apps on their VxRail deployments, eliminating the potential of DevOps silos. As a HCI system jointly engineered with VMware, VxRail is a platform for EKS Anywhere, which utilizes VMware vSphere to run VM-based Kubernetes clusters.

Amazon EKS Anywhere has been validated on VxRail with vSAN persistent block and file storage and our VxRail dynamic nodes have been validated to run with our  PowerStore scalable all flash, intelligent and adaptable storage platform for primary, persistent block storage. Customers will enjoy the compute performance, storage flexibility and ease of operations of Dell  infrastructure and the flexibility of the EKS managed service.

Diagram 1: Amazon EKS Anywhere on Dell EMC VxRail cluster using vSAN for block and file storage. VxRail with vSAN configuration, using First Class Disks (FCD) on vSAN block storage and vSAN file shares storage.
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Diagram 2: Amazon EKS Anywhere on Dell EMC VxRail dynamic node cluster using PowerStore for block storage. VxRail dynamic nodes with PowerStore configuration, using First Class Disks (FCD) deployed onto VMFS datastores made from PowerStore block storage volumes.
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In each of the 2 validated infrastructure configurations, VMware Cloud Native Storage and its corresponding Kubernetes CSI driver are used. The CSI driver is leveraged by DevOps and platform teams to deliver dynamic and automated provisioning capabilities of EKS Anywhere Persistent Storage Volumes utilizing native Kubernetes APIs, enabling infrastructure as code operations.

VMware cloud native storage in vSphere and vSAN enables customers to adopt a consistent operating model for cloud native storage with support for any vanilla Kubernetes distribution, all on their choice of underlying infrastructure architecture. In both VxRail configurations, DevOps and platform teams benefit from the same consistent operational experience that empowers them to innovate and deliver value for their organization.

Our work with Amazon reinforces the importance of on-premises infrastructure and Kubernetes orchestration integration in driving the future of IT. Customers can run their Kubernetes orchestration in the public cloud or on premises through a single console with EKS Anywhere, while at the same time having the reliability, security, ease of operations and global support that only Dell infrastructure can offer. At the company we are committed to transforming businesses and shaping the future of innovation and look forward to collaborating with AWS now and in the future on additional infrastructure platforms to make this vision a reality.

Resources:
Blog: Amazon EKS Anywhere – Now Generally Available to Create and Manage Kubernetes Clusters on Premises
Dell EMC VxRail
Dell EMC PowerStore,

⁽¹⁾ IDC White Paper: The Business Value of Dell EMC VxRail and VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail. November 2020