Day 7: ECS Fundamentals: Clusters and Launch Types

#aws #awschallenge #ecs

After Day 6, images are in ECR. Today: ECS clusters and launch types.

What is an ECS Cluster?

A logical grouping of tasks/services. Infrastructure-agnostic.

Aspect	Fargate	EC2
Management	Serverless, AWS handles servers	You manage EC2 instances
Pricing	Pay per vCPU/memory	Pay for instances + reservations
Use Case	Simple, quick setups	Custom hardware, cost control
Scaling	Auto via service	Auto Scaling groups

As of 2025, Fargate offers better isolation; EC2 for flexibility.

Console: ECS > Clusters > Create > Fargate (networking only).

CLI:

aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name my-cluster

Delete after to avoid costs: aws ecs delete-cluster --cluster my-cluster

Clusters ready! Next, task definitions.

What’s Next?
In Day 8, we’ll define ECS tasks.