Pre-requisite: To get the best from this series, it is expected that you understand how Docker works. You can use this link to get an overview of how docker works If you don't have an AWS account yet, you can follow the steps in my blog on How to create an AWS account to create one for the hands-on exercises.

This series will be released over the next couple of months. You are going to learn about the following concepts:

ECS (Elastic Container Service)
Fargate
Load Balancing
Auto Scaling
ECR (Elastic Container Registry)
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment)
Blue/Green Deployment
AWS X-Ray
Service Discovery
App Mesh

What is ECS and Fargate?

Amazon ECS is a fully managed container orchestration service that enables you to run and manage Docker containers at scale. With ECS, you can easily deploy applications in containers without needing to manage the underlying infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, providing a comprehensive solution for running microservices, batch processes, and long-running applications.

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that work with both Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) and Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service). Fargate eliminates the need to provision and manage servers, allowing you to specify and pay for resources per application. This makes it easier to build and deploy containerized applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

ECS takes care of orchestrating your containerized applications, managing their lifecycle, and integrating with other AWS services.
Fargate provides compute power on-demand, automatically adjusting to the needs of your applications without requiring you to manage any servers.

This restaurant analogy below helps illustrate how ECS and Fargate work together to simplify the process of running containerized applications.

Understanding Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate with a Restaurant Analogy

Imagine you want to start a restaurant business. To do this, you need a physical restaurant location, kitchen equipment, chefs and staff to prepare and serve the food, and all the necessary supplies.

Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) is like a professional restaurant management company. They provide you with the restaurant space, organize the kitchen staff, handle the logistics of ordering supplies, and ensure everything runs smoothly. You tell them what kind of cuisine you want to serve, the menu, and any special requirements, and they take care of the rest.

ECS as the Restaurant Management Company: ECS handles the orchestration of your "menu items" (the containers), ensuring they are prepared, served, and maintained according to your needs. You don't need to worry about the details of managing the restaurant infrastructure.

Now, let's introduce AWS Fargate into the mix. Fargate is like having a magical, self-adjusting kitchen space. You simply describe your menu and the number of customers you expect, and the kitchen automatically scales to fit your needs, providing all the necessary cooking equipment and staff without any manual intervention.

Fargate as the Magical, Self-Adjusting Kitchen: With Fargate, you don't need to worry about the capacity of your kitchen or the logistics of managing the equipment and staff. You specify the requirements for your "menu items" (the containers), and Fargate automatically provides the necessary cooking resources. It's like having a kitchen that can expand or contract to perfectly accommodate your restaurant's needs, ensuring you always have the right amount of space and resources.

Putting It All Together
When you combine ECS and Fargate, it's like having the best of both worlds. You have a professional restaurant management company (ECS) handling the overall operations, and a magical, flexible kitchen space (Fargate) that adjusts to perfectly meet your restaurant's needs without any manual setup or management.

Now that you understand on a high level how ECS and Fargate work; let's move on to the next part of this blog series where you will learn how to Launch your first ECS container.

Up Next: Launch Your First ECS Container