Choosing a suitable container is necessary for organisations using cloud-native architectures. Now, there are two good options for AWS: Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Both perform well; the difference is in their purpose and complexity. This article aims to help you find the best one for the team’s needs.
Overview of ECS
ECS is a fully managed container orchestration service that has been designed for simple AWS integration. As implied, it is easy to deploy, maintain, and scale containers, even without a Kubernetes cluster.
Regarding ECS’s features, it supports EC2 (nevertheless, management of underlying services will still be required) and AWS Fargate (the infrastructure is managed by AWS). Next, the system is well-integrated with other platforms - IAM, VPC, and CloudWatch. Finally, for ESC, the operational overhead is minimal. AWS manages most of the infrastructure and or orchestration, allowing teams to concentrate on applications.
Overview of EKS
EKS is AWS’s managed Kubernetes service, known for the power and flexibility of open-source Kubernetes on AWS. The service is suitable for teams that want to apply the Kubernetes ecosystem or need multi-cloud capabilities.
Discussing EKS’s characteristics, the system runs standard upstream Kubernetes, enabling the use of the same tools as other Kubernetes environments. Furthermore, EKS has two modes: standard (which manages worker nodes) or auto mode (which manages control and data planes). The system is also highly portable, since Kubernetes’ open standards imply that workload can move between AWS, on-premises, and other types of clouds.
To summarise the differences in terms of infrastructure:
ECS is easy to use, whereas EKS requires expertise in Kubernetes.
Both ECS and EKS are integrated with AWS, but the latter supports more Kubernetes tools.
The operation’s overhead of ECS is low, as AWS manages the majority of the details. On the other hand, for EKS, Kubernetes management is necessary.
Other considerations
There are other defining factors for ECS and EKS - cost, ecosystem, and security.
ECS is potentially cheaper than EKS, as a company only needs to pay for the computing and storage resources required for containers. There are no extra charges for the control plane. Conversely, a fixed fee applies to the managed Kubernetes control plane in the case of EKS.
From the developer’s point of view, ECS is AWS-native; therefore, its use is similar to that of AWS services. On the other side, the service is less flexible for non-AWS integrations. EKS has access to the whole Kubernetes ecosystem, including open-source tools and third-party integrations. The system is more flexible than ECS, but it is also more complex.
Lastly, in terms of security, ECS uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for access control and network security. EKS also supports IAM integration and adds Kubernetes Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for strong security; its custom security policies are more diverse.
The reasons to choose ECS
The teams should opt for ECS if they:
Want to produce apps fast with minimal setup and management overhead.
Builds apps integrated with AWS services.
Have limited Kubernetes expertise.
Prefer a serverless option (for example, with Fargate) for unpredictable workloads.
Examples of ECS use cases include web applications and APIs, batch processing with AWS integrations, and serverless container workloads.
The reasons to choose EKS
The teams should opt for EKS if they:
Require Kubernetes features, such as custom controllers or pod-level resource management.
Need portability in AWS and on-premises clouds.
Use microservices-based architectures.
Want to use the Kubernetes tooling (Helm charts, CI/CD, or security tools).
Have Kubernetes experts or plan to build Kubernetes infrastructure.
Multi-cloud deployments, as well as building CI/CD and machine learning pipelines, exemplify use cases for EKS.
In conclusion, the choice between these two systems depends on the team's expertise in Kubernetes, its plans, and related Kubernetes skills. As such, for an AWS-centric deployment, ECS is more suitable, as it is fast and cost-effective compared to EKS. However, for teams using Kubernetes as a standard, EKS will be more beneficial, as it provides complete access to its ecosystem.
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