What is AWS ECS and Fargate?

Hi there!

I know it's been a hot minute, life got in the way, but I am doing much better now.

So, we will be looking at AWS ECS and Fargate.

For many of us who are just getting introduced to cloud solutions and compute services, we would have been seeing and hearing ECS and Fargate.

Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) and AWS Fargate are both services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for deploying and managing containerized applications, but they have different underlying architectures.

AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service):

1. Container Orchestration Service:

   • ECS is a fully managed container orchestration service that allows you to run Docker containers on a cluster of Amazon EC2 instances.

   • It provides the infrastructure needed to deploy and scale containerized applications.

2. Task Definitions and Services:

   • In ECS, you define a Task Definition that describes how a Docker container should run, including information about the container image, CPU and memory requirements, networking, and other parameters.

   • Services in ECS allow you to define how many tasks (instances of a Task Definition) should run and maintain their desired state.

3. Cluster Management:

   • ECS operates on a cluster of EC2 instances that you manage or provision. These instances run the ECS agent, which communicates with the ECS service to schedule and run containers.

4. Flexible Networking:

   • ECS supports different networking modes, including EC2 (where containers share the EC2 instance's network) and AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) networking.

AWS Fargate:

1. Serverless Container Computing:

   • Fargate is an alternative launch type for ECS that allows you to run containers without managing the underlying infrastructure.

   • It's a serverless compute engine for containers, abstracting away the need to provision and manage EC2 instances.

2. No EC2 Instances to Manage:

   • With Fargate, you don't need to manage the EC2 instances on which the containers run. You only need to define your containers, their resource requirements, and networking details.

3. Task Execution Without EC2:

   • Fargate enables you to execute tasks directly without any EC2 instances. Each task gets its own isolated environment with the specified CPU and memory resources.

4. Simplified Deployment:

   • Deployment on Fargate is simpler as you don't have to worry about EC2 instances, scaling clusters, or managing infrastructure. You focus more on defining your tasks and services.

Comparison:

• ECS with EC2:

  • Gives you more control over the underlying infrastructure.

  • Suitable for scenarios where you want to manage and customize the EC2 instances.

• ECS with Fargate:

  • Provides a serverless experience for running containers.

  • Ideal for scenarios where you want to abstract away infrastructure management and focus on deploying and scaling applications.

In summary, ECS is the broader service for container orchestration, and Fargate is a specific launch type within ECS that offers serverless container computing, allowing you to run containers without managing the underlying infrastructure.

Also, while ECS and Fargate share these similarities, it's important to note that Fargate is a specific launch type within ECS that provides a serverless experience, abstracting away the need to manage the underlying EC2 instances. ECS, on the other hand, offers more flexibility by allowing you to use the EC2 launch type, giving you control over the infrastructure where your containers run.

I hope you found this article useful. If you have questions or concerns, please drop them in the comment session.

I also promise to be here more often ;-)

Ciao!