// the find
kubernetes-retired/kube-aws
[EOL] A command-line tool to declaratively manage Kubernetes clusters on AWS
kube-aws was a CLI tool for spinning up Kubernetes clusters on AWS via CloudFormation templates. It's been retired since 2020 and the kubernetes-retired org name says everything you need to know — the active fork lives at github.com/kube-aws/kube-aws, but that's also largely dormant.
- The CloudFormation-backed approach was genuinely principled — cluster state lived in AWS-managed stacks, not in local files or a separate state backend like Terraform requires.
- PKI generation was self-contained: it handled CA creation, cert signing, and KMS-encrypted asset storage without requiring external tooling.
- The plugin system allowed bolting on cluster-autoscaler, kiam, aws-iam-authenticator, and dashboard as first-class add-ons with their own manifests and config, which was ahead of how most tools handled this at the time.
- It's dead. Last commit 2020, officially retired, and the Kubernetes ecosystem has moved entirely to EKS managed node groups and tools like eksctl or Karpenter. Nothing here is relevant to a modern AWS+Kubernetes setup.
- The CloudFormation template approach aged badly — the JSON templates are large, generated blobs that are painful to diff or audit, and CF's update model caused real problems for in-place cluster upgrades.
- No support for managed node groups, Fargate, or any post-2019 EKS features — it predates the era when AWS actually made EKS usable.
- The active fork (github.com/kube-aws/kube-aws) hasn't meaningfully advanced either, so there's no living version of this idea to follow.