---
title: "Managed Kubernetes Service"
url: "https://www.pulumi.com/dev/glossary/managed-kubernetes/"
image: "https://www.pulumi.com/assets/og/dev/glossary/managed-kubernetes.png"
---

# Managed Kubernetes Service

A managed kubernetes service is a kubernetes platform where some or all of the responsibility for setup and maintenance lies with a third-party provider. The extent of services offered varies from vendor to vendor, but generally, using a managed kubernetes service shifts the responsibility for keeping the cluster online and updated from you to the vendor, as well as some or all of its maintenance.

| Feature | GKE | EKS | AKS |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Kubernetes Version Support | 14 Months | 12 Months | 12 Months |
| Container Runtime | containerd | containerd | containerd |
| Control Plane Updates | Automatic or Manual | Manual | Manual |
| Node OS | Container-Optimized OS  Ubuntu  Windows Server | Amazon Linux  Ubuntu  Windows Server | Ubuntu  Windows Server |
| Node Updates | Automatic | Manual | Automatic or Manual |
| Node Health Monitoring | Node auto-repair | Not Kubernetes-aware: Autoscaling will replace node if it fails | Node auto-repair |
| Serverless Compute | Cloud Run for Anthos | AWS Fargate | Azure Container Instance |