Amazon EKS now supports local clusters on AWS Outposts with Amazon EC2 instance store

Amazon Web Services has expanded support for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) local clusters on AWS Outposts to include first and second-generation Outposts racks running EC2 instances that boot from EC2 instance store. This enhancement extends AWS's static stability capabilities for EC2 instance store-backed instances to EKS local clusters, where the entire Kubernetes control plane runs locally on Outposts infrastructure rather than in the cloud. The updated architecture brings significant operational improvements and feature parity with cloud-based EKS clusters. AWS now manages the Kubernetes control plane through a service-owned account, eliminating the need for customers to handle etcd backups or logging agents on control plane instances. The local clusters support the same Kubernetes versions and Amazon EKS platform versions available in the cloud, along with key features including EKS add-ons, IAM Roles for Service Accounts, EKS Pod Identity, OIDC authentication, access entries, and Bottlerocket worker nodes alongside Amazon Linux 2023. This capability addresses advanced data residency requirements and provides protection against temporary network disconnects to the cloud, making it particularly valuable for organizations operating in regulated environments or locations with unreliable connectivity to AWS regions.