Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform. It automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes handles scheduling containers onto nodes, managing networking and storage, and maintaining desired state.

For voice workloads, Kubernetes provides horizontal scaling, automatic failover, and easier deployment than traditional VM-based approaches, but requires careful architectural planning to work well with stateful SIP and RTP traffic.

AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is a managed Kubernetes service on AWS. AWS manages the Kubernetes control plane, handles upgrades and patching, and provides the underlying infrastructure. You manage the worker nodes and applications.

For most service providers, EKS is the right starting point because AWS handles meaningful operational work. Self-managed Kubernetes makes sense when you have specific compliance, latency, or cost reasons to run on your own hardware.

Kubernetes orchestration is the automated management of containerized applications. Kubernetes decides where to run containers, restarts failed ones, scales up or down based on load, rolls out new versions, and manages networking and storage. It's the difference between manually managing multiple VMs and having a system that maintains desired state automatically.

There are three main reasons this is happening:

1. VMware licensing costs have increased following Broadcom's acquisition, making traditional on-premises deployments economically challenging. 

2. Classic VM architectures have rigid scaling models: you provision for peak capacity and maintain that footprint continuously. Kubernetes enables dynamic, elastic scaling that aligns infrastructure costs with actual demand.

3. The vendor ecosystem has shifted. Modern SBC and voice application vendors now ship containerized products natively, making Kubernetes adoption a business imperative rather than an optional technology choice.

Timing and networking don't work the same as on virtual machines, so it's hard to get precisely consistent results. Voice applications need careful tuning around CPU affinity, memory isolation, network plugin selection, and persistent storage to work well. Until an application has been reconfigured to work with Kubernetes, it will struggle with the differences. 

Yes, but not by default. A clean EKS install is not secure for carrier voice. You need RBAC properly configured, network policy enforced, container image scanning and signing, secrets management, runtime security, and SIP-specific protections.

At ECG, we harden Kubernetes deployments to meet the regulatory weight voice providers carry, including STIR/SHAKEN, robocall mitigation, and lawful intercept obligations.

Kubernetes certification is validation that platforms or products meet Kubernetes standards. Certified Kubernetes distributions pass conformance testing. Many SBCs and voice applications now offer containerized versions that are Kubernetes-ready. EKS Certification means the platform meets AWS and Kubernetes standards for security, performance, and functionality.

Docker is a container runtime. It packages applications into containers that include all dependencies. Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform. It manages Docker containers (or other container runtimes) across multiple machines.

While Docker runs a single container on a single machine, Kubernetes runs many containers across multiple machines and handles networking, storage, scaling, and updates. You typically use Docker to build and test containers, then deploy them with Kubernetes.

A traditional SBC scales by deploying more VM instances manually. On Kubernetes, the orchestrator scales signaling and media-handling pods automatically based on load, restarts failed components without human intervention, and rolls out new versions without downtime. The challenge is that voice traffic has stateful properties: SIP dialogs, media flows, registrations.

Designing the architecture so Kubernetes' scaling actually helps rather than breaks call flow is most of the work, and that's where having voice expertise on the Kubernetes side matters.

Managed services like EKS remove the burden of managing the control plane, upgrades, and infrastructure scaling while you focus on applications. Self-managed Kubernetes gives you more control and potentially lower costs, but requires staff to manage the platform. For most service providers, managed services are the right choice because they reduce operational overhead.