AWS Fargate vs Azure Container Service: What are the differences?

Key differences between AWS Fargate and Azure Container Service

1. 1. Compute Engine vs. Managed Service: AWS Fargate is a fully managed compute engine for containers, while Azure Container Service is a managed service that gives you control over the compute engine. Fargate abstracts away the underlying infrastructure and allows you to focus on running containers, while Azure Container Service requires you to choose and manage the compute engine.

2. 2. Pricing Structure: AWS Fargate has a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, where you only pay for the resources you consume while running containers. Azure Container Service, on the other hand, follows a more complex pricing model, with charges based on the chosen orchestrator, virtual machines, and storage.

3. 3. Integration with Other Services: AWS Fargate integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon RDS, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Azure Container Service provides integration with Azure services like Azure Monitor, Azure Active Directory, and Azure Storage.

4. 4. Supported Container Orchestrators: AWS Fargate supports only Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) as the container orchestrator, while Azure Container Service offers multiple options, including Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Mesosphere DC/OS.

5. 5. Availability: AWS Fargate is available in multiple regions globally, ensuring high availability for your containerized applications. Azure Container Service is also available in multiple regions but has a slightly smaller global footprint compared to AWS.

6. 6. Vendor Lock-in: While both AWS Fargate and Azure Container Service allow you to run containers in a cloud environment, they have different levels of vendor lock-in. AWS Fargate is tightly integrated with the broader AWS ecosystem, potentially making it more challenging to migrate to a different cloud provider. Azure Container Service offers a more vendor-agnostic approach, giving you the flexibility to move your containers to other cloud providers or run them on-premises.

In Summary, AWS Fargate and Azure Container Service differ in terms of their approach to computing engines, pricing structures, integration with other services, supported container orchestrators, availability, and vendor lock-in.