Amazon EKS Anywhere + Armory

Armory is excited to share we are an Amazon EKS Anywhere launch partner. Amazon EKS Anywhere is a new deployment option for Amazon EKS that enables you to easily create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises, including on your virtual machines and bare metal servers.  Armory enables enterprises to unlock innovation by reliably deploying software at scale. One way we do this is through Armory Enterprise, our enterprise-grade, multi-target progressive delivery platform built on Spinnaker, the world’s leading continuous delivery platform.

Armory Enterprise, through its Kubernetes Operator, enables easy installation in any Kubernetes cluster, including an EKS-A cluster.  This is accomplished by:

• Native Kubernetes Tooling – Use common tooling (kubectl and customize) to install and manage Armory Enterprise – no need to learn a bespoke CLI tool. You can store Armory Enterprise secrets in Kubernetes secrets. And you can validate your Spinnaker configurations before applying them.
• Improved Management – Upgrade your Armory Enterprise version by simply changing one value in a file and applying it. Enable Armory Enterprise to deploy itself when there are changes to configs, or if it goes into an unhealthy state. And finally, automatically expose Armory Enterprise via load balancers instead of complex manual setups. 
• GitOps Workflows – Centralize all of your Armory Enterprise configurations and manage them in a single Git repo. Enable collaborative code reviews on config changes to ensure the installation is stable and secure. Built-in config version control allows rapid rollbacks and easy audit-ability in the event of a bad update. 

Many enterprises run applications on-premises to satisfy regulatory, latency, and data residency requirements, or simply to leverage existing infrastructure investments. In these cases, using cloud-based tools can be difficult and costly, if not impossible. Their teams have to install, operate, and manage separate container orchestration software and need to use disparate tooling across their AWS and on-premises environments. Our customers have asked us for a way to manage their on-premises Armory Enterprise installations without this added complexity and cost. This is now possible through EKS Anywhere.

EKS Anywhere and Armory Enterprise

EKS Anywhere brings a consistent AWS management experience to your data center, building on the strengths of Amazon EKS Distro (the same Kubernetes that powers EKS on AWS.) EKS Anywhere saves you the complexity of buying or building your own management tooling to create EKS Distro clusters, configure the operating environment, update software, and handle backup and recovery. EKS Anywhere enables you to automate cluster management, reduce support costs, and eliminate the redundant effort of using multiple open source or 3rd party tools for operating Kubernetes clusters. EKS Anywhere is fully supported by AWS. In addition, you can optionally leverage the EKS console to view all your Kubernetes clusters, running anywhere.

Armory Enterprise on EKS Anywhere provides many proprietary features, including:

• Armory Policy Engine – Setup and enforce pipeline security & compliance rules across your entire enterprise. Enable fine-grained access control and ensure proper compliance and configuration throughout the deployment pipeline.
• Armory Agent for Kubernetes – Scale to thousands of Kubernetes clusters with high performance, minimal latency, and accelerated pipeline execution times. Also, simplify and decentralize Kubernetes account management while enhancing security.
• Armory Terraform Integration – Seamlessly integrate Spinnaker with Hashicorp Terraform. Run Terraform plan/apply/destroy/output stages as part of your Spinnaker pipeline to fully align your infrastructure with your deployments.
• Armory Pipelines as Code – Create and store Spinnaker pipelines in a Git repository (in JSON, HCL, or YAML). This enables 1) version control, templates, and modularization in your pipelines, and 2) sophisticated conditional logic features, multiple repos / multiple branch support, Slack notifications, and more.
• Armory Secrets Management – Encrypt secrets used within your Spinnaker configuration files. Utilize Hashicorp Vault or encrypted S3-compatible buckets as secret stores.
• Armory Certified Releases – Install, configure, deploy and upgrade your Spinnaker instance with ease, speed, and confidence. Automatically validate the stability & security of new Spinnaker releases with a suite of dozens of continuously running integration and quality tests. 

With Armory’s integrations, you can automate your code from commit to production, where users can then monitor applications, scale up, scale down, roll back, or roll forward, and you can use Armory to view and automate all of these actions.

To try Armory Enterprise outside of EKS Anywhere, you can use the Armory AWS Quick Start.