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aws eks list-insights detects upgrade blockers before you hit them

1 min read

I'd been manually checking EKS upgrade readiness, not realizing AWS has a built-in feature called Cluster Insights. One command surfaces kubelet version skew, add-on incompatibility, and other blockers — no extra tooling needed.

aws eks list-insights --region ap-northeast-1 --cluster-name my-cluster
# For details on a specific finding:
aws eks describe-insight --region ap-northeast-1 --cluster-name my-cluster --id <insight-id>

It checks five things automatically:

  • Kubelet version skew
  • Amazon Linux 2 compatibility
  • Cluster health issues
  • EKS add-on version compatibility
  • kube-proxy version skew

On a fresh cluster it returns empty, but production clusters can surface real warnings. Pair it with kubent/pluto for deprecated API scanning and you've got a solid pre-upgrade checklist with minimal effort.

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Shinya Tahara

Shinya Tahara

Solutions Architect @ AWS

I'm a Solutions Architect at AWS, providing technical guidance primarily to financial industry customers. I share learnings about cloud architecture and AI/ML on this blog.