AWS Fargate vs Amazon EKS: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between AWS Fargate and Amazon EKS.

1. Deployment Model:

   • AWS Fargate: With Fargate, you can create and manage containers without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. It abstracts away the EC2 instances and allows you to focus solely on deploying and running your containers.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is a managed Kubernetes service provided by AWS. It allows you to run Kubernetes on AWS without the need to manage the control plane. You have fine-grained control over the underlying infrastructure, including the EC2 instances.

2. Orchestration:

   • AWS Fargate: Fargate provides a serverless compute engine for containers. It automatically scales your containers based on demand and handles all the orchestration tasks, such as scaling, load balancing, and logging.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS uses Kubernetes as the orchestration platform. It provides a fully managed Kubernetes control plane, allowing you to deploy and manage containerized applications using Kubernetes features and tools. You have more control and flexibility in managing your workloads compared to Fargate.

3. Networking:

   • AWS Fargate: Fargate supports VPC networking, allowing you to leverage various AWS networking components like load balancers, security groups, and private subnets. You can configure network ACLs and use VPC endpoints for integrating with other AWS services.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS integrates tightly with AWS VPC, providing you complete control over your network setup. You can define custom networking configurations using VPC features like subnets, routing tables, and security groups. EKS also supports the integration of third-party networking solutions.

4. Pricing Model:

   • AWS Fargate: Fargate pricing is based on the amount of vCPU and memory resources consumed by your containers. You pay for the resources allocated to your containers and the duration of their execution.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS pricing is based on the underlying EC2 instances used to run your workload. You pay for the EC2 instances and any other AWS resources associated with your EKS cluster, such as load balancers and storage volumes.

5. Flexibility and Portability:

   • AWS Fargate: Fargate provides a high level of abstraction and simplifies the deployment of containers. It allows you to develop and deploy your applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. However, this reduces the level of control and customization available.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS allows you to leverage the full power of Kubernetes for managing your containerized applications. It offers more flexibility and portability, allowing you to move your workloads across different cloud providers or on-premises environments, as long as they support Kubernetes.

6. Integration with AWS Services:

   • AWS Fargate: Fargate integrates well with various AWS services such as Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and others. It allows you to seamlessly connect your containers with these services.
   • Amazon EKS: EKS provides tight integration with other AWS services, enabling you to leverage the full ecosystem of AWS services for building your applications. You can easily integrate with services like AWS CloudWatch, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Secrets Manager, and more.

In Summary, AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers, providing simplicity and abstraction, while Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service offering fine-grained control over the infrastructure and flexibility for managing containerized applications.