EKS

The line between what the EKS SDK controls - the AWS-managed control plane, node groups, add-ons, and access - and what only kubectl can touch: the Kubernetes API inside the cluster.

Hands-on EKS basics: create a cluster, wait for it to go ACTIVE, describe its endpoint and OIDC issuer, attach a managed node group, then update a kubeconfig and clean up - in both SDKs.

The two ways EKS gives pods somewhere to run - managed node groups (EC2 you scale) and Fargate profiles (serverless per-pod capacity) - created and operated through the EKS SDK.

Installing, versioning, and updating EKS-managed add-ons - VPC CNI, CoreDNS, kube-proxy, and the EBS CSI driver - through CreateAddon, DescribeAddonVersions, and UpdateAddon in both SDKs.

The EKS SDK habits that keep a cluster upgradable, cheap, and secure: wait on every async operation, upgrade in version order, size node groups with min/max, go IRSA-first, and use access entries over aws-auth.