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DOP-C02 · Question #480

A company uses Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS) to host containerized applications that are available in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR). The company currently launches…

The correct answer is B. Enable EKS Auto Mode on all EKS clusters. Remove all existing managed node groups. To ensure continuous EKS cluster upgrades with least operational overhead, enable EKS Auto Mode on all clusters and remove existing managed node groups.

Submitted by priya_blr· Mar 6, 2026Configuration Management and IaC

Question

A company uses Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS) to host containerized applications that are available in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR). The company currently launches EKS clusters in the company's development environment by using the AWS CLI aws eks create-cluster command. The company uses the aws eks create- addon command to install required add-ons. All installed add-ons are currently version compatible with the version of Kubernetes that the company uses. All clusters exclusively use managed node groups for compute capacity. Some of the EKS clusters require a version upgrade. A DevOps engineer must ensure that upgrades continuously occur within the AWS standard support schedule. Which solution will meet this requirement with the LEAST operational overhead?

Options

  • ARun the aws eks update-cluster-version command, providing appropriate arguments such as
  • BEnable EKS Auto Mode on all EKS clusters. Remove all existing managed node groups.
  • CRun the eksctl command to upgrade the EKS clusters. Provide appropriate arguments such as
  • DRefactor the environment to create EKS clusters by using infrastructure as code (IaC). Upgrade

How the community answered

(45 responses)
  • A
    7% (3)
  • B
    56% (25)
  • C
    11% (5)
  • D
    27% (12)

Why each option

To ensure continuous EKS cluster upgrades with least operational overhead, enable EKS Auto Mode on all clusters and remove existing managed node groups.

ARun the aws eks update-cluster-version command, providing appropriate arguments such as

Running the `aws eks update-cluster-version` command manually for each cluster requires active intervention during every upgrade cycle, which does not provide continuous automation or the least operational overhead for ongoing upgrades.

BEnable EKS Auto Mode on all EKS clusters. Remove all existing managed node groups.Correct

EKS Auto Mode is a feature that fully automates the management, operations, and version upgrades for Amazon EKS clusters, including the Kubernetes control plane and associated compute. By enabling Auto Mode, AWS automatically handles continuous version upgrades to keep clusters within the standard support schedule, significantly reducing operational overhead compared to manual or IaC-driven upgrade processes.

CRun the eksctl command to upgrade the EKS clusters. Provide appropriate arguments such as

While `eksctl` simplifies EKS cluster management, using `eksctl upgrade cluster` still requires manual execution for each upgrade, failing to meet the requirement for continuous, automated upgrades with minimal operational burden.

DRefactor the environment to create EKS clusters by using infrastructure as code (IaC). Upgrade

Refactoring to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a best practice, but maintaining and updating IaC definitions for each cluster version upgrade still necessitates manual changes and deployments, which is not as hands-off as EKS Auto Mode for continuous upgrades.

Concept tested: EKS Auto Mode for automated cluster upgrades

Source: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/auto-mode.html

Topics

#EKS Upgrades#Operational Overhead#AWS Fargate#EKS Automation

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