Amazon EC2 Container Service vs Azure Container Instances

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Amazon EC2 Container Service

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Amazon EC2 Container Service vs Azure Container Instances: What are the differences?

  1. Cost model: Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) and Azure Container Instances (ACI) have different pricing models. ECS supports on-demand and spot instances, where you pay based on the number of instances and their sizes. In contrast, ACI follows a per-second billing model, where you pay only for the actual container usage duration.
  2. Container orchestration: ECS is tightly integrated with other Amazon Web Services (AWS) products, such as Elastic Load Balancer and Identity and Access Management, making it suitable for deploying large-scale containerized applications. On the other hand, ACI is a lightweight container solution that does not provide native support for container orchestration tools like Kubernetes.
  3. Scaling capabilities: ECS allows scaling at various levels, from manual scaling to fully automated scaling using AWS Auto Scaling. It also provides integration with AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and scaling based on custom metrics. ACI, however, lacks automatic scaling and requires manual intervention for scaling container instances.
  4. Networking capabilities: ECS offers flexible networking options, such as its own virtual private cloud (VPC), dynamic port mapping, and integration with AWS networking services. ACI, in comparison, offers limited networking capabilities, with support for only one public or private IP address per container instance.
  5. Service discovery: ECS supports service discovery through its own built-in service discovery mechanism or integration with third-party service discovery systems like Consul. ACI, on the other hand, does not provide native service discovery capabilities, requiring external tools or custom solutions for service discovery.
  6. Container instance management: ECS enables managing container instances through its EC2 Container Registry, allowing you to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. ACI, though it supports container images, lacks a dedicated container registry and relies on external image repositories like Azure Container Registry or Docker Hub.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) and Azure Container Instances (ACI) differ in their cost model, container orchestration capabilities, scaling capabilities, networking capabilities, service discovery options, and container instance management.

Decisions about Amazon EC2 Container Service and Azure Container Instances
Andres Paredes
Lead Senior Software Engineer at InTouch Technology · | 3 upvotes · 88.3K views

If you want to integrate your cluster and control end to end your pipeline with AWS tools like ECR and Code Pipeline your best option is ECS using a EC2 instance. There are pros and cons but it's easier to integrate using cloud formation templates and visual UI for approvals, etc. ECS is free, you need to pay only for the EC2 instance but unfortunately, it is not standard then you cannot use standard tools to see and manage your Kubernetes. EKS in the other hand uses standard Kubernates definitions but you need to pay for the service and also for the EC2 instance(s) you have in your cluster.

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Pros of Amazon EC2 Container Service
Pros of Azure Container Instances
  • 100
    Backed by amazon
  • 72
    Familiar to ec2
  • 53
    Cluster based
  • 42
    Simple API
  • 26
    Iam roles
  • 7
    Scheduler
  • 7
    Cluster management
  • 7
    Programmatic Control
  • 4
    Container-enabled applications
  • 4
    Socker support
  • 2
    No additional cost
  • 1
    Easy to use and cheap
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    What is Amazon EC2 Container Service?

    Amazon EC2 Container Service lets you launch and stop container-enabled applications with simple API calls, allows you to query the state of your cluster from a centralized service, and gives you access to many familiar Amazon EC2 features like security groups, EBS volumes and IAM roles.

    What is Azure Container Instances?

    It is a solution for any scenario that can operate in isolated containers, without orchestration. Run event-driven applications, quickly deploy from your container development pipelines, and run data processing and build jobs.

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    What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2 Container Service and Azure Container Instances?
    Kubernetes
    Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
    Git
    Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
    GitHub
    GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.
    Visual Studio Code
    Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
    Docker
    The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
    See all alternatives