AWS ECS & Docker for AWS?

General
1

Hi,

Sorry for newbie question.

How does AWS ECS & Docker for AWS compare? Are they seperate things or sould I expect them to merge into ECS?

I am trying to figure out a future-proof way to use docker at AWS(with Swarm)… thanks…

2

Docker for AWS and AWS ECS are different products. One is built by Docker Inc, the other is built by AWS.

I don’t think ECS currently supports the most recent Docker version and swarm-mode, so if you want that I recommend Docker for AWS.

1 Like
3

Hello,

Yes both are two different products. Amazon ECS uses Docker images in task definitions to launch containers on EC2 instances in your clusters.

Docker EE for AWS is fully baked, tested and comes with the latest Enterprise edition version of Docker.

Thanks.

4

yes, they are different products. AWS ECS runs only on AWS. One benefit of ECS is AWS manages the control plane (think as Swarm manager nodes) for you. So you don’t need to worry about the manager node failure handling.

5

Is Docker for AWS only a EE feature? Or is it also available in CE?

6

A CE variant is available too: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-aws/#quickstart

7

Is it possible to automate the docker-for-aws provisioning process by following these steps:

a) downloading the docker swarm specific CloudFormation template
b) use it as input to an ansible playbook that relies on the cloudformation module
c) deploy your swarm stack on the CF stack that was created via steps a+b? (using a compose file and docker stack deploy)

8

Yup, I think that should work

9

Many thanks for the prompt responses.
I have also posted a relevant question in SO since it is of a broader scope, in case you may have any useful feedback.

10

Hi, can anyone provide a template playbook with this 3 steps? Thank you!