Overview
Architecture and evolution of an Amazon EKS platform used to run SaaS workloads in a complex enterprise environment.
Context
Platform growth required a foundation for multiple clusters and a high volume of workloads while preserving availability, security, consistency and AWS integration.
Challenge
Balance compute, persistence, networking, observability, automation and cost without compromising platform operations.
My role
- Amazon EKS, VPC and networking architecture
- Node group and compute capacity analysis
- IAM, EFS, load balancing and AWS service integration
- Troubleshooting, performance, observability and cost analysis
- Terraform, Helm and CI/CD automation
Architecture
The architecture separated cloud infrastructure from Kubernetes workloads. Application traffic moved through controlled protection, load balancing and ingress layers before reaching cluster services.
Technical decisions
- Clear separation between infrastructure and workloads
- Compute choices driven by workload profile, availability and cost
- Shared persistence only where required
- Controlled exposure and built-in observability
Security & governance
Identity integration, segmentation and exposure were architectural concerns guided by least privilege and defense in depth.
Automation
Infrastructure as Code, Helm and CI/CD supported repeatable and traceable change.
Engineering challenges
Investigations correlated application, Kubernetes, network, storage and AWS behavior instead of treating each layer in isolation.
Results
- A more consistent platform foundation
- More traceable infrastructure change
- Better support for capacity, security and cost decisions