Having done multiple K8s migrations, I can tell you that many of the problems around migrating to k8s have little to do with actually setting up the cluster. There's dockerizing all your apps, setting up the build->deploy pipeline for each app, and fixing all the hardcoded hacks where your apps aren't properly 12-factor (failing to take config from env vars, assuming you "always" deploy to a specific cloud, etc).
The other main component of my time in a k8s engagement revolves around logging, monitoring, alerting and backups of the k8s cluster, which hopefully EKS handles for you.
All told, actually starting the k8s cluster is probably less than 10% of my time.
> All told, actually starting k8s cluster is probably less than 10% of my time.
+1.
I've found myself (with Azure ACS) re-creating clusters quite often - as they don't support upgrades. This takes minutes with my deploy scripts, replicating the state of the cluster you're copying is the main bit of work.
I agree with this but I think the responsibility for fixing all this stuff lies with the teams responsible for each app - they should be the ones dockerising apps, setting up monitoring etc - that way you're distributing the devops stuff around the team which is what you really want.
The other main component of my time in a k8s engagement revolves around logging, monitoring, alerting and backups of the k8s cluster, which hopefully EKS handles for you.
All told, actually starting the k8s cluster is probably less than 10% of my time.