{"id":2304,"date":"2026-01-22T05:28:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T05:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/?p=2304"},"modified":"2026-01-22T05:39:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T05:39:21","slug":"cilium-installation-on-aws-eks-as-primary-cni-clusterpool-ipam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/cilium-installation-on-aws-eks-as-primary-cni-clusterpool-ipam\/","title":{"rendered":"Cilium installation on AWS EKS as Primary CNI |\u00a0ClusterPool\u00a0IPAM\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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As Kubernetes<\/a> clusters on\u00a0Amazon EKS\u00a0grow in scale, the default\u00a0AWS VPC CNI<\/a>\u2014which relies on EC2 ENI<\/a> and IP address limits\u2014often becomes a constraint for modern, high-density workloads. These limitations push platform teams to look for more scalable and flexible networking models.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To overcome this, many organizations are adopting Cilium as the primary CNI on AWS EKS with\u00a0ClusterPool\u00a0IPAM and overlay networking. By fully replacing the default CNI, Cilium removes dependency on ENI-based pod IP allocation, enables predictable IP management at the cluster level, and supports faster, more reliable scaling.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this blog, we discuss installing Cilium as the primary CNI using\u00a0ClusterPool\u00a0IPAM on EKS and explain why this setup is widely adopted by enterprises building scalable, future-ready Kubernetes platforms on AWS.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Video on Cilium Standalone on AWS EKS with ENI IPAM and Native Routing<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

In case you want to refer to the video, then here is\u00a0<\/span>my<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>vi<\/span>deo\u00a0<\/span><\/span>(disclaimer: I have used AI-voice over to avoid MTI from my accent)<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n