Book Image

Docker on Amazon Web Services

By : Justin Menga
Book Image

Docker on Amazon Web Services

By: Justin Menga

Overview of this book

Over the last few years, Docker has been the gold standard for building and distributing container applications. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leader in public cloud computing, and was the first to offer a managed container platform in the form of the Elastic Container Service (ECS). Docker on Amazon Web Services starts with the basics of containers, Docker, and AWS, before teaching you how to install Docker on your local machine and establish access to your AWS account. You'll then dig deeper into the ECS, a native container management platform provided by AWS that simplifies management and operation of your Docker clusters and applications for no additional cost. Once you have got to grips with the basics, you'll solve key operational challenges, including secrets management and auto-scaling your infrastructure and applications. You'll explore alternative strategies for deploying and running your Docker applications on AWS, including Fargate and ECS Service Discovery, Elastic Beanstalk, Docker Swarm and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). In addition to this, there will be a strong focus on adopting an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach using AWS CloudFormation. By the end of this book, you'll not only understand how to run Docker on AWS, but also be able to build real-world, secure, and scalable container platforms in the cloud.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

When to use Fargate?


As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, AWS Fargate is a service that allows you to deploy your container-based applications, without requiring you to deploy any ECS container instances, auto-scaling groups, or any of the associated operational requirements that come with managing ECS cluster infrastructure. This positions AWS Fargate as a serverless technology that sits somewhere between running Functions as a Service using AWS Lambda and running your own infrastructure using traditional ECS clusters and ECS container instances. 

Although Fargate is a great technology, it is important to understand that Fargate is very young (at least at the time of writing this book), and it does come with some limitations that may make it unsuitable for some use cases, outlined as follows:

  • No Persistent Storage: Fargate does not currently support persistent storage, so if your applications need to use persistent Docker volumes, you should use an alternative service, such as...