aws / aws/containers-roadmap

[EKS] Karpenter inside control plane

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EKS Proposed
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Description

### Community Note

* Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 [reaction](https://blog.github.com/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/) to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request
* Please do not leave "+1" or "me too" comments, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request
* If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment

**Tell us about your request**
It would be really useful if EKS came pre-installed with Karpenter running in the control plane. Currently with Karpenter you have to first setup at least one nodegroup for Karpenter, then Karpenter can manage the rest.

If the control plane ran Karpenter for you, then there wouldn't be a need for any management of nodegroups for customers.

**Which service(s) is this request for?**
EKS

**Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?**
As an EKS cluster manager, when creating a cluster I have to bootstrap it with various tools as well as enough resources to run workloads. Also as a user of Karpenter, this requires setting up a nodegroup (managed), installing Karpenter and limiting it to run on that nodegroup before deploying other workloads.

This also means that as a cluster manager I need to be aware of the two different node setups: managed nodegroups and Karpenter nodes.

**Are you currently working around this issue?**
Currently we deploy managed nodegroups, then karpenter.

**Additional context**
Sort of similar to https://github.com/aws/containers-roadmap/issues/47

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The request concerns EKS and running Karpenter in the control plane, but it does not identify files, tests, or a repository entry point. Start by reviewing the linked related roadmap issue and the current managed-nodegroup-to-Karpenter workaround, then clarify feasibility and scope with maintainers. Done would mean EKS can provide Karpenter without customers bootstrapping a nodegroup.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
aws, kubernetes
Domain
cloud, infrastructure
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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