ECS (Elastic Container Service)

What is ECS?

• ECS (Elastic Container Service) is a fully-managed container orchestration service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows you to run and manage Docker containers on a cluster of virtual machines (EC2 instances) without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

With ECS, you can easily deploy, manage, and scale your containerized applications using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the API. ECS supports both "Fargate" and "EC2 launch types", which means you can run your containers on AWS-managed infrastructure or your own EC2 instances.

ECS also integrates with other AWS services, such as Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon VPC, allowing you to build scalable and highly available applications. Additionally, ECS has support for Docker Compose and Kubernetes, making it easy to adopt existing container workflows.

Overall, ECS is a powerful and flexible container orchestration service that can help simplify the deployment and management of containerized applications in AWS.

Difference between EKS and ECS?

• EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and ECS (Elastic Container Service) are both container orchestration platforms provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). While both platforms allow you to run containerized applications in the AWS cloud, there are some differences between the two.

Architecture: ECS is based on a centralized architecture, where there is a control plane that manages the scheduling of containers on EC2 instances. On the other hand, EKS is based on a distributed architecture, where the Kubernetes control plane is distributed across multiple EC2 instances.

Kubernetes Support: EKS is a fully managed Kubernetes service, meaning that it supports Kubernetes natively and allows you to run your Kubernetes workloads on AWS without having to manage the Kubernetes control plane. ECS, on the other hand, has its own orchestration engine and does not support Kubernetes natively.

Scaling: EKS is designed to automatically scale your Kubernetes cluster based on demand, whereas ECS requires you to configure scaling policies for your tasks and services.

Flexibility: EKS provides more flexibility than ECS in terms of container orchestration, as it allows you to customize and configure Kubernetes to meet your specific requirements. ECS is more restrictive in terms of the options available for container orchestration.

Community: Kubernetes has a large and active open-source community, which means that EKS benefits from a wide range of community-driven development and support. ECS, on the other hand, has a smaller community and is largely driven by AWS itself.

In summary, EKS is a good choice if you want to use Kubernetes to manage your containerized workloads on AWS, while ECS is a good choice if you want a simpler, more managed platform for running your containerized applications.

Task

Set up ECS (Elastic Container Service) by setting up Nginx on ECS.

Pre-requisite: Create an IAM role with AmazonECSTaskExecutionRolePolicy.

Now let's begin our task.

Step 1: Create a new task definition for Nginx.

• Go to the ECS console and click "Task Definitions" in the left-hand menu.

• Give the task definition a name.

• Specify the container name with port mappings.

• Also, specify the app environment for task definition, operating system and task size.

• Give a task role that we created.

• We also can specify the storage for the task and then click on next.

• Review and create the task definition.

• Thus we get the task definition successfully.

Step 2: Create a new ECS service.

• Create a new Cluster as shown below.

• The new cluster "nginx-cluster" will get ready.

• To create a new service, enter the cluster and select "Create".

• Then, this page will appear where we mention details as shown below.

• Click on service and choose the task definition from the list of task definitions.

• Specify the number of tasks (instances) to run.

• Choose the network configuration (default VPC and subnets).

• Create a new security group that allows HTTP port 80.

• Configure load balancing options, such as the load balancer type and port mappings.

• Create a new target group as well.

• Here, we have successfully created a cluster service named "Nginx_service1".

Step 3: Access the Nginx instance.

• If we go inside "Nginx_service1", we will find the two desired tasks or instances.

• If we assess the target group, all our tasks will be viewed as being in a healthy state.

• For accessing the Nginx server in the tasks, copy the DNS of the load balancer.

• Paste it on the browser address bar, we will get this awesome result.

That's all guys, our task is completed.

Happy to share this with you all.

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