Modernize applications on-prem with CockroachDB on Amazon EKS-Anywhere

Managing a single Kubernetes cluster in a single environment can be a challenge, and if you extend this to multiple clusters in disparate environments, the complexity can become too much.  However, there are often requirements on our applications, such as latency, policy, regulatory or costs that require us to run on-prem, in the cloud, and elsewhere. DevOps teams want an easier way to deal with these complexities without managing entirely separate deployment stacks.  Often, they want the simplicity of a cloud service on-prem.

Furthermore, every app needs a database, and running these within a Kubernetes cluster can be complex. Many simply turn to running the database alongside the cluster with a wholly separate set of operational requirements. This also invalidates the value of the distributed nature of Kubernetes deployments as it may create bottlenecks and single points of failure. What if we could gain consistent control and simplify the deployment of databases in Kubernetes? 

Amazon EKS-Anywhere & CockroachDB

Amazon EKS Anywhere allows DevOps teams to run Kubernetes outside of AWS, including on virtual and (soon) bare metal machines, in their own data centers, and on their own infrastructure using the same consistent EKS experience. 

CockroachDB is a cloud-native, distributed SQL database built from the ground up to deliver on the core principles of atomicity, scale, and survival so DevOps teams can manage their database IN Kubernetes, not along the side of it. By running CockroachDB on EKS Anywhere, customers can have a truly hybrid application deployment of their business-critical system of record workloads, with all the convenience of running in AWS. (Take a look at some of CockroachDB’s use cases to see workloads running in production today on CockroachDB running in Kubernetes.)

Deploying CockroachDB within an EKS Anywhere Kubernetes cluster provides DevOps teams with security, storage configuration, elastic scale, and performance upgrades on-premise. What’s even better is that for CockroachDB, EKS Anywhere works very similarly to hosted EKS in AWS. That means companies get similar performance and experience running CockroachDB on EKS Anywhere as they do running EKS in AWS. Not only that, but with a multi-region CockroachDB deployment, customers can run a single logical database across multiple EKS and EKS Anywhere clusters together.

Deploying CockroachDB on EKS-Anywhere

For more information on launching CockroachDB on EKS-Anywhere, please check out our Kubernetes deployment documentation - we updated our docs to call out any areas where EKS-Anywhere diverged from standard EKS (FWIW, other than defining a storage class, it works exactly the same as EKS in AWS).  

A special thank you goes out to the integration lab team at Insight Enterprises, who provided the infrastructure we used to validate this integration at their Research and Innovation Hub. Insight is a strategic partner of AWS and Cockroach Labs, and they provide world-class services and support for taking your applications to the cloud.