Serverless Containers with ECS Fargate - Part 1

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In this episode, we cover the following topics:

• Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) basics
  • Orchestration system for containers
  • Well integrated with all the other Amazon services – More bang for your buck
  • ECS components
    • Cluster
      • Logical grouping of tasks or services
      • For EC2 launch type, set of EC2 instances that are defined and managed by:
        • Launch Configuration
        • Auto Scale Group
    • Service
      • Allows you to run and maintain a specified number of instances of a task definition simultaneously
      • For long-running applications
    • Task
      • Defines a collection of containers that you want to run together
      • Specifies resource quotas needed to run (e.g. memory, CPU, disk volumes)
  • Simple deployment with ECS
    • Build image, publish image, create task definition revision, update ECS service
• Running containers
  • Three methods
    • Create a long running task
      • ECS service, service scheduler, integration with ELB
    • Run a single task
    • Create a scheduled task
  • We are going to focus on the most typical use case - ECS services
    • You have to choose a launch type
      • EC2 or Fargate
• Fargate
  • Announced at re:Invent 2017
    • Generally available since 2018
  • What is it?
    • Allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters of EC2s
      • Don't need to choose server types, decide when to scale your clusters, or optimize cluster packing
      • You get complete control over task placement within your own VPC
        • But underlying infrastructure is managed by Fargate
  • Benefits
    • No clusters to manage
    • Seamless scaling
    • Only pay for when you are running tasks
      • Ideal for batch jobs, cron jobs and other on-and-off workloads
      • Running cluster of instances constantly incurs costs, but Fargate stops billing when containers stop
  • Specifics
    • Each Fargate task has its own isolation boundary
      • It does not share the underlying kernel, CPU resources, memory resources, or ENI
        • Leverages Firecracker microVM
        • Increases efficiency (e.g. approximately 50% price cut for Fargate in January 2019 due to Firecracker)
    • Tasks must be launched into a cluster
      • Cluster is logical infrastructure and permissions boundary for isolating groups of tasks
      • Clusters support running both EC2 and Fargate launch types (mix-n-match)
    • Fargate tasks require awsvpc network mode
      • Provides each task with an ENI
        • You must specify one or more subnets
        • You must specify one or more security groups
      • Decide on whether to assign public IP address to ENI
        • If on public subnet, you must assign public IP to pull images
        • If on private subnet, just requires NAT gateway
    • You must specify CPU and memory at the task level
      • You can also optionally specify CPU and memory at container level
    • Only supports the following log drivers
      • awslogs
        • Sends log information to CloudWatch Logs
      • splunk
  • Pricing
    • Based on amount of CPU and memory used
    • Charged by the second, with minimum charge of 1 minute
    • Example costs for running a blog server 24x7
      • Note: costs for us-west-2 region
      • Fargate, 0.25 VCPU, 0.5GB memory
        • per vCPU per hour: $0.04048
        • per GB per hour: $0.004445
        • Memory = $1.60 (30 days * 24 hours * 0.5 GB * 0.004445)
        • CPU = $7.29 (30 days * 24 hours * 0.25VCPU * 0.04048)
        • Total = $8.89 / month
      • t2.micro, 1 VCPU, 1GB memory
        • per hour: $0.0116
        • Total = $8.35 (30 days * 24 hours * 0.0116)
      • t3.nano, 2 VCPU, 0.5GB memory
        • per hour: $0.0052
        • Total = $3.74 (30 days * 24 hours * 0.0052)

Links

• Amazon Elastic Container Service
• ECS Fargate
• AWS Fargate Price Reduction – Up to 50%

End Song
ERRE - Lamictal

For a full transcription of this episode, please visit the episode webpage.

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