%%LARA 7:%% Extended support for AWS EKS and other new features

As engineers at Labyrinth Labs, we realised that many companies face similar infrastructure needs, and instead of reinventing the wheel for each project, we decided to create a battle-tested foundation that just works.

That’s how LARA was born: a cloud-native platform built on Kubernetes (EKS), AWS best practices, and a suite of powerful open-source tools like Grafana, Loki, and ArgoCD. It allows teams to spin up secure, scalable infrastructure quickly, using Infrastructure as Code. With LARA, you’re spending less time on plumbing, and more time delivering real product value for your business.

In this post, we’ll walk you through what’s new in LARA 7 (more specifically in version 7.1, because we all prefer those fixes of minotier versions after major releases.), how we got here, and what you can expect in the future.

Under the hood: a technical overview

LARA is built around a modular Terraform codebase, with Amazon EKS as its backbone. Everything is versioned, stored in Git, and deployed using GitOps principles via ArgoCD. That means predictable, auditable deployments, and no more configuration drift nightmares.

The platform includes production-ready modules for networking, storage, security, and observability: so you can focus on building applications, not YAML spaghetti.

LARA also ships with a full observability stack: metrics via Prometheus (backed by Thanos for long-term storage), logs through Grafana Loki or OpenSearch, and a rich set of prebuilt Grafana dashboards. CI/CD? Covered too - with GitLab CI runners, ArgoCD for continuous delivery, and native support for canary and blue-green deployments.

Security is woven into the core: encrypted data, strict access policies, vulnerability scanning, and separation of workloads by default.

What’s new in LARA 7?

• AWS EKS Extended Support – without the AWS bill: As AWS shifts to a 26-month Kubernetes support lifecycle (14 months standard + 12 months extended), it also started charging for the extra year. LARA 7.1 addresses this head-on - upgrading EKS and related components so our customers can avoid those extended support fees entirely. In other words: you stay on supported versions, without unexpected invoices.
• Upgrading components to the latest versions: We updated CSI drivers (EBS, EFS), Helm charts, and providers. One example: we moved Prometheus from Bitnami’s chart to the official community Helm chart, which comes with smarter default alerts and improved resource handling.
• Shipping this release was no small feat. Development alone took over 100 man-days, plus several more for release coordination and testing.
• Smooth rollouts for customers: Every release is tested internally first on our own Labyrinth Labs infrastructure. Then, we gradually roll it out to smaller customers (usually in dev/staging), before moving on to larger, more complex environments. One of our bigger customers (hi QU!) took about a week from start to finish - including custom configurations and post-upgrade validation. Most standard environments take 1–3 man-days, depending on size and complexity.
• 109 issues have been fixed, 895 files have been modified with 74,091 code changes and 22,313 deletions.

For most customers, we perform the upgrade as part of a subscription. In the case of the Assist & Support licence model, where the customer manages and upgrades the platform themselves, we have created a detailed migration guide that outlines the steps required to move from version 6.x to 7.1.

Looking to the future

LARA 7.1 was a major milestone, but we’re not stopping there.

We’ve started investing heavily into automated tests - especially for custom scenarios that don’t match our defaults (e.g. modified ingress configs, alternate OS distros). Expect smarter, faster, and safer upgrades with every future release.

• LARA 8: The planned 8.0 release will continue to add and tune components that were not fully upgraded in 7.1. Next we are planning upgrades to EKS 1.32 from EKS 1.30.
• Release Cycle: Labyrinth Labs is moving towards a regular cycle of 2-3 LARA releases per year. This schedule will allow customers to get new features and enhancements every 4-6 months without a long wait. At the same time, the team is investing in automation and testing tools to ensure that each subsequent release runs smoothly and reliably.

Conclusion

LARA 7 brings a stronger, faster, more cost-effective foundation for modern cloud infrastructure. Whether you’re spinning up new environments or upgrading existing ones, it helps you stay current without the stress.

If you’re already using LARA: thank you. If you’re new here: welcome. Either way, we’d love your feedback. It helps us shape the future of this platform - and we’re just getting started.

We believe that with LARA 7, organisations can take full advantage of the AWS cloud and focus on developing new features instead of routine operational tasks.