Despite the adoption of the latest DevOps trends, tools, and modern approaches, most teams continue to face several challenges along the way. One of the biggest of them is the need to manage complex infrastructure, which takes away their focus from developing and deploying cutting-edge software solutions.
This is where container orchestration comes in. By automatically provisioning, deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications, it enables DevOps teams to automate the complex task of infrastructure management. Read on as we delve into the benefits of container orchestration and deep dive into the capabilities of Amazon’s top container orchestration tools – AWS ECS and AWS EKS.
The Need for Container Orchestration
Let’s face it. Today’s software applications have become extremely multifaceted and need to offer a consistent user experience across devices, operating systems, and touchpoints. Developing such applications that meet the current (and future) needs of users doesn’t come easy.
Container orchestration eases much of the burden of day-to-day infrastructure management. By making it easy to deploy and run containerized applications, it enables DevOps teams to:
- Improve application availability by allowing DevOps teams to detect and fix infrastructure failures and increase application uptime more easily.
- Automate application lifecycle management, thus improving application development and deployment speed and accuracy.
- Reduce human errors by making app development processes faster and repeatable and improving deployment velocity.
- Minimize the attack surface by isolating various processes, strengthening security policies across platforms, and improving overall security.
- Enhance scalability by scaling container deployments up or down – depending on fluctuating workload requirements.
Understanding the Role of AWS ECS and EKS in Container Orchestration
The container orchestration market is expected to reach $1.38 billion by 2026. Some key drivers for this impressive growth include the continued modernization of IT infrastructure, the surge in the implementation of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, as well as the rising adoption of DevOps.
Riding on this wave is Amazon, which offers two critical container orchestration services, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), along with a range of cutting-edge AWS DevOps tools.
AWS makes running Kubernetes in the cloud easy, allowing teams to deploy and manage containerized applications at scale. It enables them to manage clusters of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) compute instances and run containers on those instances.
Both tools offer a powerful way for DevOps professionals to package and deploy their software applications. They’re lightweight and provide a consistent, portable software environment to run and scale applications.
Through seamless workload isolation, AWS ECS and EKS aid in accelerating the development and deployment of applications while also driving the required levels of security, scalability, and high availability.
Top Benefits of Amazon ECS
As a fully managed container orchestration service, Amazon ECS enables DevOps teams to easily deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications. It comes built-in with AWS configuration and operational best practices and enables seamless scalability with both AWS and third-party tools. This allows teams to run and grow container workloads across diverse cloud and on-premises environments while enjoying:
- High security via robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) features, frequent compliance validations, and regular third-party audits.
- Improved speed of deployment as teams do not have to configure or manage any control planes, nodes, or add-ons and can simply focus on building cutting-edge applications.
- Autoscaling that makes it easy for teams to increase/decrease the desired count of tasks in the Amazon ECS service automatically.
Also Read: DevOps Trends For 2023
Top Benefits of Amazon EKS
As a fully managed Kubernetes service, Amazon EKS empowers DevOps teams to run containerized applications – without having to install, operate, and maintain their own control plane. By automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications, AWS EKS ensures:
- High availability that can be achieved by running and scaling the Kubernetes control plane across multiple AWS Availability Zones
- Unlimited scalability that is possible through the automatic scaling of control plane instances, depending on the current load
- Seamless integration with several AWS services, including Amazon ECR for container images, Elastic Load Balancing for load distribution, IAM for authentication, and Amazon VPC for isolation
Understanding the Differences and Making the Right Choice
Both AWS ECS and EKS offer a range of container orchestration services that streamline infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and management. Yet, when it comes to choosing one over the other, many organizations hit a roadblock.
Deciding what service to use requires careful thinking and a deep understanding of attributes that align best with current application requirements or operational preferences. Here are some tips that can help ease the decision for you:
ECS
- Amazon ECS is extremely simple to set up. It is this simplicity that attracts most users, as they can quickly and easily build, deploy, or migrate their containerized applications.
- In addition to being simple, AWS ECS is also easy to use. It minimizes the number of decisions DevOps teams must make pertaining to compute, network, and security configurations without sacrificing scale or features.
- With it comes to pricing, Amazon ECS is more cost-effective than EKS. For EKS, teams are required to pay $0.10 per hour for each cluster they operate, which, for several hundred clusters, translates into a huge cost.
- Although both ECS and EKS are equally secure, ECS offers stronger Identity and Access Management. Admins can easily deploy containers and leverage Amazon’s native IAM tooling to manage the environment.
EKS
- Amazon EKS is widely popular because of the vibrant ecosystem and community it offers. Its broad flexibility and consistent APIs do the heavy lifting of operating Kubernetes at scale.
- In addition to being flexible, AWS EKS also offers more security. Offering a reliable and robust Kubernetes environment, it is optimized for teams looking to build and run highly secure and resilient services.
- Since EKS enables automatic access to Kubernetes native security tooling, DevOps teams can have greater control over the security of their containerized applications.
- Based on the open-source Kubernetes, EKS also offers a greater degree of portability, allowing teams to run applications in any public cloud or on-premises location.
If you’re looking to drive fast-paced development and better time-to-market, embracing container orchestration services like Amazon ECS and EKS can transform your DevOps outcomes.
Choosing between ECS and EKS does not have to be difficult. Depending on your needs, you can leverage the benefits of both services across shared operations, integrated security tooling, common IAM, and more for compute and network options. As an AWS partner, enreap can help you make the most of AWS ECS and EKS. Explore our AWS DevOps Consulting Services to take your development success a notch higher!
