Vantage Launches Extended Support Reporting and Recommendations for AWS EKS

Today, Vantage announces the General Availability of AWS Extended Support Reporting and Recommendations for Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), allowing Vantage customers to manage the lifecycle of their Amazon EKS clusters more effectively. This enhancement provides visibility into the support status of Kubernetes versions, highlighting clusters incurring Extended Support fees and those approaching end-of-life milestones. Customers can now proactively plan upgrades, optimize costs, and maintain compliance with AWS support policies.

Metadata about Support Type and full Support Calendar is now available within Active Resources for AWS EKS Clusters.

AWS started charging Extended Support fees for EKS in 2023, which gives AWS customers an additional 12 months of support past the End of Standard Support window for Kubernetes minor versions. This support comes at a premium cost to incentivize customers to move off legacy versions. AWS publishes support calendars for EKS, but this data is not made available in the AWS console for reporting, so organizations must resort to manual reporting and calculations of upcoming End of Support dates.

Now, with the launch of AWS Extended Support Reporting and Recommendations for EKS in Vantage, Vantage automatically annotates EKS clusters with metadata in Active Resource Reports indicating their current support type—Standard or Extended—and the support calendar with end dates of each support phase. Customers can leverage this information to filter and create views of clusters based on their support status or End of Support dates, facilitating timely upgrades and cost avoidance. Vantage will guide engineers as to what version they need to upgrade to in order to avoid additional charges, as well as provide direct linking to the AWS console to perform the upgrade. Additionally, Vantage will provide recommendations for clusters currently incurring Extended Support fees and those set to enter Extended Support within the next three months.

These new reporting capabilities and recommendations are available today within Active Resource Reports for all Vantage customers with an AWS connection. To get started, navigate to the Active Resources and Recommendations pages in the console. For more information, see the Resource Report and Cost Recommendations documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is being launched today?

Today, Vantage is launching Extended Support Reporting and Recommendations. If you have AWS as a connected provider, you can see these recommendations on the Cost Recommendations page. There will also be additional information within Resource Reports related to EKS resources.

2. Who is the customer?

Any Vantage user who has connected AWS as a provider and uses EKS.

3. How much does this feature cost?

There is no additional cost to see these recommendations; however, if you are on a free trial, the specifics of the recommendations will be obscured.

4. What is Amazon EKS Extended Support?

Amazon EKS Extended Support allows customers to run Kubernetes versions for an additional 12 months past the 14 months of Standard Support. During Extended Support, clusters continue to receive critical security patches. However, AWS charges an increased fee of $0.60 per cluster per hour, compared to $0.10 during Standard Support. To learn more, see the AWS EKS Extended Support Documentation.

5. What information is available to me within Resource Reports?

When viewing EKS Active Resource Reports, you will now have additional metadata fields for Lifecycle Status (Standard or Extended), End of Standard Support date, and End of Extended Support date. With this information, you can curate reports for teams based on their lifecycle status and upcoming End of Support dates.

6. What recommendations are surfaced in Cost Recommendations?

On the Cost Recommendations, you will receive two recommendations related to EKS extended support:

• Total cost currently being incurred by EKS clusters that are in Extended Support.
• Projected cost of EKS Clusters that are within 3 months of their End of Standard Support date.

7. Can I ignore a specific recommendation?

If you want to hide a recommendation, click the Archive icon. The recommendation will be added to your archived recommendation list.

8. Will I be notified when recommendations are surfaced?

We do not currently send notifications when new recommendations are surfaced.

9. Does Vantage provide this metadata and recommendations for other services that incur Extended Support, such as RDS and OpenSearch?

Not at this time. We plan to launch extended support metadata and recommendations for RDS and OpenSearch in the near future