EKS vs ECS for Container Orchestration on AWS

May 27, 2024

June 11, 2024

EKS vs ECS for Container Orchestration on AWS

At Parsectix, we offer implementation services for both Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS). Each service has unique advantages and considerations, making them suitable for various scenarios. In this detailed comparison, we aim to help you determine which service best meets your needs.

Containers have become indispensable in modern software development. They encapsulate applications in self-contained environments, ensuring consistent performance across different computing ecosystems. Containers also enable microservices architectures, enhancing scalability, resilience, and development velocity.

While containers offer numerous benefits, managing them—especially at scale—can be challenging. Thankfully, solutions exist to simplify the management and orchestration of containers. Here, we'll compare two AWS-managed services: Amazon ECS and EKS. By the end of this comparison, you will have a clear understanding of their similarities, differences, and strengths, helping you decide which is most suitable for your use case.

What is Amazon ECS?

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a fully managed container orchestration service that simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications. With built-in AWS best practices, ECS integrates seamlessly with AWS and third-party tools like Amazon Elastic Container Registry and Docker. This allows teams to focus on building applications instead of managing environments. ECS enables running and scaling container workloads across AWS Regions and on-premises without the complexity of managing a control plane.

Key Features and Capabilities of Amazon ECS:

Security: Integrates natively with the Security, Identity, and Management and Governance AWS services. You can assign granular permissions for each of your containers, giving you a high level of isolation when building your applications and through integrations with Amazon Guard Duty, you can quickly and easily detect external threats to your workloads before they escalate.
Task Definitions: Task definitions serve as blueprints for your applications, specifying parameters such as Docker images, CPU and memory allocation for each task/container, and startup commands for containers. You can run launch as many tasks as you want from a single Task Definition.
Managed Service: ECS eliminates the need to manage control planes, nodes, or add-ons. It integrates tightly with AWS services like Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) and AWS Fargate.
Load Balancing: Distribute traffic across containers using Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, or Classic Load Balancers.
CI/CD Integration: ECS supports continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) by monitoring source code changes, building new Docker images, and pushing them to repositories like Docker Hub or Amazon ECR. ECS also integrates with AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild for seamless CI/CD workflows.
Monitoring and Logging: Integrations with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and FireLens for container logging enable comprehensive monitoring and logging.
IAM Integration: Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for granular permission assignment to each container.
AWS Copilot CLI: Build, release, and operate containerized applications directly from your local development environment using AWS Copilot CLI.
Launch Types: ECS supports multiple launch types, including Fargate (a serverless option), EC2 (for large workloads), and External/ECS Anywhere (for running containerized applications on on-premises servers or virtual machines).
Interconnectivity: Easily interconnect your ECS applications using service discovery via AWS Cloud Map or Amazon ECS Service Connect, where you define service endpoint names for client applications.
Low Latency Support: ECS supports workloads that require low latency and local data processing through Local Zones, Wavelength Zones, and AWS Outposts.

What is Amazon EKS?

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed service for running Kubernetes in AWS and on-premises data centers. In the cloud, EKS automatically manages the Kubernetes control plane's availability and scalability, handling container scheduling, application availability, and cluster data storage. EKS leverages AWS's performance, scale, reliability, and integrates with AWS networking and security services. On-premises, EKS offers a consistent, fully-supported Kubernetes solution with integrated tools, easily deployable to AWS Outposts, virtual machines, or bare metal servers.

Key Features and Capabilities of Amazon EKS

Managed Control Plane: EKS provides a scalable, highly available control plane that runs across three availability zones, ensuring reliable management of your Kubernetes clusters.
Node Types: EKS clusters include various types of worker nodes:
- Fargate: Serverless nodes that eliminate the need to manage underlying instances.
- Managed Node Groups: These automate the provisioning and lifecycle management of EC2 instances for EKS clusters.
- Self-Managed Nodes: Provide complete control over EC2 instances within an EKS cluster.
Integrated Console: A centralized console allows you to organize, visualize, and troubleshoot Kubernetes applications running on EKS.
Add-Ons: EKS supports numerous add-ons, including:
- Amazon VPC CNI Plugin: Provides native VPC networking for your cluster.
- Kube-proxy: Maintains network rules on each EC2 node to enable network communication to Kubernetes pods.
- CoreDNS: Provides DNS-based service discovery within your cluster.
- Kubernetes Dashboard: A web-based UI for managing your cluster.
- AWS App Mesh Controller: Enables service mesh capabilities for better observability and traffic management.
Load Balancers: Supports Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and Classic Load Balancers for distributing traffic.
eksctl Tool: A command-line tool that simplifies the creation and management of EKS clusters.
Networking and Security: EKS offers robust networking and security features such as:
- IPv6 Support: Ensuring modern networking capabilities.
- Service Discovery: Via AWS Cloud Map.
- Service Mesh: Through AWS App Mesh.
- VPC Native Networking: Via Amazon VPC CNI and Project Calico.
- AWS IAM Integration: For granular access control over Kubernetes control plane nodes.
Cost Management: EKS automatically tags EC2 instances that join a cluster for easy cost tracking in the AWS Billing Console. Additionally, it supports Kubecost to monitor costs across Kubernetes resources like pods, namespaces, nodes, and labels.
Monitoring and Logging: Integrations with AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch enable comprehensive monitoring, logging, debugging, and auditing of your Kubernetes clusters.

Amazon EKS vs. ECS: Head-to-head Comparison

The following table gives an overview of key differences and similarities between AWS ECS and AWS EKS.

EKS vs. ECS: Basic Comparison

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Attribute	EKS	ECS
Type of service	Container orchestration platform.	Container orchestration platform.
Type of container	Kubernetes	Docker
Smallest deployable unit	The smallest unit is a pod, which can consist of one or more containers that are deployed together.	The smallest deployable unit is a task, which can be a single container or a group of containers that are scheduled together.
Cluster management	AWS manages the Kubernetes control plane. However, you must manage worker nodes (or use Fargate to offload the responsibility to AWS).	AWS manages the cluster control plane, and there is no need for manual intervention in managing the orchestration layer.

EKS vs. ECS: Scalability, security, and networking capabilities

Attribute	EKS	ECS
Scalability	Can scale to handle very large workloads. • EKS employs the K8s Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to adjust pod counts based on CPU or custom metrics, and the Cluster Autoscaler to manage EC2 instances within node groups. • For vertical scaling, EKS can leverage the K8s Vertical Pod Autoscaler to optimize resource allocation per pod. EKS's integration with AWS Fargate allows for scaling without directly managing EC2 instances, offering a serverless option. • EKS offers more flexibility and granular control over scaling due to the extensive features provided by Kubernetes, such as custom metrics for the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler. However, this comes with the complexity of Kubernetes configuration and management.	Can scale to handle very large workloads. • ECS supports both horizontal scaling (changing the number of tasks) and vertical scaling (changing the task size). • ECS can automatically scale the number of tasks (containers) up or down using AWS Application Auto Scaling based on specified CloudWatch metrics. • In addition, ECS capacity providers (Fargate or EC2 Auto Scaling groups) handle infrastructure scaling for tasks in your clusters. • ECS may be easier to scale for users who prefer a more AWS-native solution and a simpler service model.
Monitoring	You can use AWS solutions like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS CloudTrail to monitor EKS. You can also use third-party monitoring tools like Dynatrace, Datadog, Prometheus, and Grafana.	ECS integrates with several AWS tools for monitoring, auditing, and logging purposes: Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail. You can also use third-party monitoring tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK Stack.
Security	Key capabilities include: • Kubernetes RBAC • Integration with AWS IAM, Amazon VPC support for secure networking. • Secrets management (via AWS Secrets Manager and KMS encryption).	Key capabilities include: • Integration with AWS IAM for granular access control. • Amazon VPC support for network isolation. • Integration with AWS Secrets Manager for managing sensitive data
Key networking capabilities	• EKS allows Kubernetes pods to directly use Amazon VPC network resources, with each pod receiving an IP address from the VPC. • Can leverage the Amazon VPC CNI plugin for Kubernetes, allowing Kubernetes pods to have VPC networking features like VPC flow logs, security groups, and network ACLs • Supports ELB, ALB, and NLB, plus ingress controllers for more complex load balancing configurations. • Uses native Kubernetes network policies for sophisticated traffic filtering and control. • Supports various add-ons that can enhance networking capabilities. Calico and kube-proxy are a couple of examples	• ECS tasks can be run in an Amazon VPC (each task can have a network interface and its own IP address). • Integrates with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), including Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Network Load Balancer (NLB). • Uses AWS Cloud Map for custom domain names and service discovery within a VPC. • AWSVPC network mode for tasks to have dedicated ENIs, but it also supports two other modes: host mode (the most basic networking mode), and bridge mode (allows you to use a virtual network bridge to create a layer between the host and the networking of the container).

EKS vs. ECS: Ease of use, flexibility, and deployment options

Attribute	EKS	ECS
Ease of use	• EKS has a steeper learning curve than ECS. You need to have a good understanding of K8s to make the most of EKS. • In addition, there are more moving parts to manage compared to ECS (for instance, worker nodes, pods, stateful sets, and ingress controllers). • Like ECS, there’s a management console for EKS, but you will likely need to interact with Kubernetes-specific interfaces and tooling (like kubectl) as well, which adds complexity.	• ECS offers a simplified orchestration experience, leveraging AWS-native concepts that integrate seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem. It's more accessible for those less familiar with container orchestration, with a gentler learning curve. • The AWS management console streamlines the process of managing and orchestrating container deployments on ECS.
Deployment options	EKS offers several deployment options: • AWS cloud/EC2 (no need to install, operate, and maintain your own K8s control plane or nodes). • AWS Outposts (enables native AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models in your on-prem facilities). • EKS Anywhere (somewhat similar to Outposts; the difference is that you supply the hardware, and the K8s control plane lives in your data center). • EKS Distro (open source distribution of the Kubernetes software and dependencies deployed by Amazon EKS in the cloud. Unlike the other options, you don’t benefit from AWS support when using Distro). • Fargate (serverless approach to provisioning compute capacity for EKS clusters without any need to maintain a fleet of EC2 instances).	ECS offers several deployment options: • Amazon EC2 (provides control over EC2 instances for tailored infrastructure management of containerized applications). • AWS Outposts (extends ECS to on-premises setups, offering a hybrid environment with AWS infrastructure and services). • ECS Anywhere (enables ECS to run on your own on-premises infrastructure, leveraging consistent AWS tooling and APIs). • AWS Local Zones (supports running ECS tasks in localized AWS environments for applications requiring low latency). • AWS Wavelength (allows ECS to deploy applications closer to users on 5G networks, reducing latency for mobile and edge devices). • Fargate (serverless option to run containers without managing servers, offering simplified scaling and resource allocation).
Compatibility and portability	EKS is fully Kubernetes-conformant, meaning applications designed for EKS can be deployed to any standard Kubernetes environment with minimal changes. This cross-compatibility is a core advantage of EKS, facilitating straightforward migration of workloads across different clouds and on-premises environments.	ECS is primarily designed for AWS. While ECS uses Docker containers, which are portable, the full range of ECS services and integrations does not translate directly outside of AWS. Thus, migrating to or from ECS may involve a significant reconfiguration effort.
Customization	EKS offers a higher degree of customization compared to ECS. For example, you have the freedom to define your pods' specs, including containers, volumes, and compute resources, using Kubernetes manifests. In addition, you can use Kubernetes add-ons to extend and customize your cluster's functionality.	ECS provides customization within the confines of the AWS ecosystem. For instance, you can create task definitions, which include the container definitions, volumes, and networking configuration.
Integrations	Like ECS, EKS integrates with numerous AWS services (e.g., CloudWatch, CloudTrail, AWS IAM, AWS App Mesh). Unlike ECS, EKS supports numerous third-party integrations (in essence, it can work with almost any tool designed to be used with Kubernetes).	Direct integrations with many AWS services, such as AWS IAM, CloudWatch, CloudFormation, and CodeDeploy. Limited number of integrations with third-party technologies. Examples include Jenkins and GitLab.

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When to use Amazon ECS

You’re familiar with Docker and prefer using a simple container orchestrator instead of Kubernetes.
You want to run Docker containers at scale without managing the orchestration layer.
You’re committed to using the AWS ecosystem.
You need tight integrations with AWS services like AWS IAM and Amazon CloudWatch, CodeBuild & CodeDeply.
You’re looking for a relatively easy learning curve.
You have a simpler use case, and Kubernetes is overkill.
You want to move your workloads into a managed service without a huge upfront investment and operational overhead.

When to use Amazon EKS

You prefer using K8s over Docker and you have some experience managing and deploying Kubernetes clusters.
You have workloads running on Kubernetes, but you want a managed service to simplify K8s management at scale.
You need only some integrations with other AWS services, like AWS CloudTrail and AWS IAM.
You have a complex, enterprise-level use case.
You need granular control over container placement.
You plan to run workloads across multiple cloud providers or on-premises, making use of Kubernetes' portability.
You want to leverage the vast ecosystem of K8 tools, plugins, and community contributions.

Conclusion

Choosing between Amazon EKS and ECS depends on your specific needs and operational preferences. EKS is ideal for complex, multi-cloud environments requiring high customization, but it comes with higher complexity and operational overhead. Conversely, ECS provides a simpler, more integrated solution that is cost-effective and easier to manage, making it ideal for organizations that prioritize ease of use, faster time-to-market, and native AWS integration.

At Parsectix, we are equipped to implement both solutions, ensuring that we tailor our approach to meet your unique requirements and operational capabilities. However, given its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and deep integration with AWS services, ECS often represents a more streamlined and efficient choice for many organizations.

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