AWS Fargate
AWS Tutorial: AWS Fargate
Welcome to the AWS Fargate lesson. So far, we have discussed managing containers using ECS and EKS, but in both scenarios, you still had to manage the underlying EC2 servers (Worker Nodes). What if we combined Containers with Serverless?
Why Learn AWS Fargate?
AWS Fargate is the modern, preferred way to run containers on AWS. It removes the operational burden of managing clusters of EC2 instances. If you want the portability of Docker containers but the hands-off infrastructure management of Serverless, Fargate is the perfect solution.
Tutorial Overview
In this tutorial, you will learn:
- What AWS Fargate is.
- The difference between the EC2 Launch Type and the Fargate Launch Type.
EC2 Launch Type vs. Fargate Launch Type
When you configure a cluster in ECS or EKS, you must choose how the underlying compute capacity is provided:
- EC2 Launch Type: You provision standard Amazon EC2 instances. You must pick the instance type, monitor the EC2 health, patch the operating system, and ensure you have enough EC2 instances running to hold all your containers. You are billed for the EC2 instances, regardless of how many containers are actually running on them.
- Fargate Launch Type: You do not provision any EC2 instances! You simply tell AWS, "I need a container with 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM," and AWS finds the space on their massive hidden server fleet to run it. You are billed precisely for the CPU and RAM your container uses per second.
Exercise
?Which launch type allows you to run Docker containers in ECS without provisioning, patching, or scaling the underlying EC2 servers?