AWS re:Invent 2024 - Navigating the Cloud Compute Landscape with Amazon ECS

At AWS re:Invent 2024, the annual cloud computing conference, Alexandr Moroz and Re Alvarez Parmar presented a session on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS). This blog post summarizes their insights on how ECS is shaping the future of cloud computing and container management.

Overview of Amazon ECS

Amazon ECS is becoming really popular. In fact, over 65% of new AWS containers customers are choosing it to run their apps. It's so powerful that it can handle 2.4 billion tasks every week! What's really interesting is that over 78% of ECS users are picking AWS Fargate, which means they like the idea of not having to manage servers.

Choosing Your ECS Deployment: EC2 vs. Fargate

The presentation compared two ECS deployment options: on EC2 and with Fargate. ECS on EC2 is great when you want to control everything about your setup. You can use custom software and special EC2 features. It's perfect for apps that need specific performance or have unique network needs. Fargate, on the other hand, is all about keeping things simple. It's ideal for teams who just want to focus on building their apps without worrying about the underlying tech.

Securing and Monitoring Your Containerized Apps

Security was a big topic in the talk. The speakers explained how AWS and customers share the job of keeping things safe. They pointed out that Fargate has some cool security features built-in, like keeping tasks separate and automatically updating the system. Keeping an eye on your app is important, and ECS has some new tools to help. Monitoring capabilities have been enhanced with improvements to CloudWatch Container Insights, making it easier to troubleshoot and optimize containerized applications.

Scaling Made Simple

ECS is also really good at growing or shrinking your app as needed. It integrates with Application Auto Scaling to do this automatically. The speakers also shared about a new feature that uses machine learning to predict when your app needs to grow or shrink. Pretty cool, right?

Connecting Your Services

They also talked about how ECS makes it easier for different parts of your app to talk to each other. ECS Service Connect helps with this. Plus, ECS can now work with VPC Lattice, which lets different apps talk to each other across different AWS accounts and VPCs.

Optimizing Costs with ECS

Of course, they talked about saving money too. They talked about using different types of computer chips, like AWS Graviton, which can be cheaper for some tasks. They also explained how buying Savings Plans and Reserved Instances can cut costs. For Fargate users, there are special tricks too. One cool feature called SOCI helps start containers faster, which can potentially save money. The speakers also introduced the concept of idle task recommendations, a new feature of AWS Compute Optimizer that helps identify and eliminate unnecessary running tasks. Another tip was to make sure you're using the right size containers – not too big, not too small. All these ideas can help users get the most out of their AWS budget without sacrificing performance.

The Future of Cloud Computing with ECS

Amazon ECS continues to play a crucial role in modern cloud computing. Whether you're modernizing legacy applications or building new cloud-native solutions, ECS offers powerful tools and features to support your journey. For those interested in diving deeper, the full session recording is available on the AWS YouTube channel. What I found most interesting about this talk was how it showed how fast cloud computing is changing. The ideas and tips shared by Alexandr and Re aren't just theory – they're real tools that can help build better apps. By understanding and using these tools, teams can create apps that work well, stay secure, and don't cost too much to run.