Scalability, Reliability, and Security are three important aspects of any business. Outages can decrease productivity and cause significant financial losses. To prevent these kinds of activities, nowadays companies are switching to containers.
Containers are the types of virtualization that permit you to handle an application with all its dependencies for software development that can consistently run on any platform.
In this article, we will look at the AWS Fargate VS ECS comparison, key features of both services, their benefits limitations, and differences, and which one would be best for you. Here, we will discuss two of the best container services offered by AWS: Fargate and Elastic Container Service (ECS). After going through the article, you’ll get a good overview of which service best meets your requirements.
AWS Fargate
AWS Fargate is a type of container management service offered by AWS. It is a serverless engine and a computational processor that works with Amazon Elastic Container Services(ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS). To monitor and launch containers, AWS Fargate interfaces with AWS ECS and EKS.
Fargate was founded in 2017 by Amazon Web Services. It is a cloud-computing platform that permits users to run containers in the cloud. It has become widely popular and widely used as it enables you to modify applications by running containers in the cloud. With Fargate, you can plan and manage your applications while AWS monitors and maintains the infrastructure. AWS services provide you with database storage, user-friendly functions, and numerous benefits to firms. Now we’ll get deeper and get an overview of AWS Fargate, its working, features, benefits, and limitations.
Features of AWS Fargate
1. Amazon-managed Service: AWS Fargate provides a feature of managing the cluster automatically by Fargate. You only need to take care of the containers and software design.
2. Scaling of Resources: Fargate also monitors the needs of resources by the application. The need for the application once provided is fulfilled by Fargate on its own. Many of the clusters are scaled up by Fargate within seconds.
3. Ensure Smooth Running of Containers: Fargate also ensures the high availability of resources by ensuring the smooth running of containers. This allows you to focus on developing containerized applications without doubting underlying infrastructure.
4. Integration with Amazon ECS: Fargate also integrates with Amazon ECS very easily. You just need to define the application similar to what you do at Amazon ECS.
Benefits of AWS Fargate
Here are some of the benefits of AWS Fargate:
1. Container-based Application Management: Container-based application management is being provided as a service without much need of input from your side to run the Docker apps.
2. Seperate Containers: Separate containers are also available to run multiple groups of applications through Microservices.
3. Code Pipeline: CodePipeline can also be executed with ECS.
4. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): It also provide a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that restricts resources sharing with other users.
Limitation of AWS Fargate
Here are some of the limitations of AWS Fargate:
1. Limited Customizability: In Fargate you may not be able to design or customize the underlying host environment, since Fargate abstracts away the underlying infrastructure. For some organizations, this can be a big drawback.
2. Vendor Lock-In: If you adopt Fargate, you become strongly integrated with the AWS environment. If you choose to migrate to another cloud provider and manage containers on-premises this will require significant changes to your configuration and architecture.
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is also a type of managed container service based on a proprietary orchestrator by Amazon Web Services. ECS easily integrates with other AWS services, like AWS Fargate, Amazon EC2, and Amazon Elastic Container Registry. It also streamlines container application management and deployment.
It allows you to run, manage, and stop Docker containers on the cluster of EC2 instances. With the EC2 launch type, ECS deploys your containers to your instances. You need to know the number of instances you want, register them in a cluster, and then ECS will take care of the rest.
Features of Amazon ECS
ECS offers a huge range of features that will help you to run your applications. Some of the features include:
1. Service discovery: AWS ECS can easily discover and configure your AWS services by using Route 53 DNS of Amazon service.
2. Auto-scaling: AWS ECS can auto-scale your cluster up and down as needed in response to dynamic demand.
3. Health Checks: AWS ECS can easily track the health of your containers and also replace that if any fail.
4. Task Definitions: AWS ECS enables you to use JSON to describe the tasks you want to run and the ecosystem in which they’ll run.
Benefits of Amazon ECS
The benefits of Amazon ECS include the following:
1. Fully managed service: ECS users don’t need to provision the underlying host infrastructure or install container orchestration software. The service offers all the essential resources necessary to deploy containerized apps.
2. Multiple deployment options: ECS supports multiple container deployment using EC2 instances that users manage themselves. This scale-up management effort somewhat but also provides more control. Moreover, users can also use AWS Fargate, to provision the container host infrastructure.
3. Native security: Amazon ECS easily integrates natively with the IAM (AWS Identity and Access Management) framework, and its monitoring software, to offer basic security access, controlling and monitoring needs.
4. Discount Opportunities: Users also receive many discount opportunities while using it to deploy containers on the cloud server of EC2.
Limitation of Amazon ECS
Here are some of the limitations of Amazon ECS:
1. Uses a Proprietary Orchestration Technology: If we compare it with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and other Kubernetes container orchestration services, one of the main limitations of Amazon ECS is that Amazon ECS uses a proprietary orchestration technology that can’t benefit from open-source extensions.
2. Limited Tools Available: Businesses that choose Amazon ECS for their container deployment requirements are likely to find themselves lacking some of the tools as it provides limited service and tools integrations that are available since only a few third-party tools easily integrate with Amazon ECS.
Fargate VS ECS: A Detailed Comparison
1. Fargate VS ECS- Performance:
Fargate: Fargate is the best choice for running containers in a serverless atmosphere.
ECS: ECS is the best choice for people, looking for the flexibility and control to manage their EC2 instances.
2. Fargate VS ECS- Scalability:
Fargate: Fargate can automatically manipulate your cluster up and down in response to dynamic demand.
ECS: ECS can also automatically manipulate your cluster up or down in response to changing demand.
3. Fargate VS ECS- Ease of Use:
Fargate: Fargate is much easier to operate when compared to ECS.
ECS: If you are not used to AWS or DevOps practices, this might be complex to operate.
4. Fargate VS ECS- Pricing:
Fargate: Fargate offers a pay-as-you-go service, and you only have to pay for the resources you use.
ECS: ECS offers free service, and you only pay for the resources you utilize.
Conclusion
In conclusion, in the battle of Fargate vs ECS, both are master in their place. But we recommend using Fargate. But the question is why? Although both tools are best, fargate is much easier to operate when compared to ECS.
However, tools like Fargate and ECS are best for running containers in AWS. But, if you are not used to AWS or DevOps practices, this might be a complex task for you. That’s where Perimattic stands out.
At Perimattic, our expert team in AWS can provide you with all your ECS and Fargate needs. We help you choose the best model for your workload, set up your cluster, and automate the deployment of the applications. Perimattic not only helps you to save your time but also money on your AWS bill.
