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ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker - So far in my experience, Docker in production is really a lot harder than the casual developer / devops person r

ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker - So far in my experience, Docker in production is really a lot harder than the casual developer / devops person realizes based on the "getting started with docker" tutorials. My conclusion with Docker is that, in general™, you really need to have a justifiable reason to go whole-hog into Docker, especially if you're not on AWS / considering ECS. I'm glad the article covers ECS, as it makes a lot of the scheduling / config issues simpler!

krat0sprakhar 11y ago
Totally agree! To be honest I'm still a bit wary of using ECS via the web console. Too many (new) terms to understand! Thankfully the folks at AWS were smart enough to make a CLI that understands docker-compose. So that's how I ended up using it.
- nzoschke 11y ago
  We're working on a whole ECS toolkit at http://convox.com/ http://convox.com/. There are similarities to the ECS CLI, but we are going for the whole "batteries included" approach. Builds, Logs, cluster and app scaling, encrypted environment, and more.
deleted 11y ago
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gtaylor 11y ago
> ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker ECS is AWS-specific, which is perfectly fine for some. But Kubernetes has been amazing for us. It abstracts many of the differences between AWS/Google Cloud, it's open source, and is far more powerful and flexible. The only issue right now is that setting the cluster up involves running some shell scripts (yuck). We use Google Container Engine (hosted Kubernetes on Google Cloud), so we don't have to deal with that, but the option is there should we ever need to go multi-cloud. Figured I'd toss that out there for anyone struggling with ECS (it can be a bit rigid) or keeping an eye on things beyond AWS. Kubernetes is still young and rough in areas, but it is a nice, opinionated way to orchestrate containers.
- merb 11y ago
  wow so instead of running my configuration management stuff I know need to either: - be on aws - be on gcloud - any other cloud that has docker support out of the box OR: I need docker + a configuration management to setup my environment, or I need to somehow manage my coreos configs. Oh and finally don't forget to run a network over a network cause it's dockerish so for most clouds this means we run a network on a network which runs a network. docker adds so much complexity. people just don't see this right upfront and use most of their time into these stuff, but there are easier ways to deploy. YES if you are really big and if your servers needs to scale way beyond the most than you need it probably since configuration management won't help you and setting up servers even in the cloud take some time looking at some netflix articles. however i just don't get it why people use their time for docker when there are other things to do in their programs.
  - pbecotte 11y ago
    But it doesn't really, it is just another tool to learn like your configuration management software. Honestly, learning Docker to a high level was WAY easier than getting my Chef knowledge to a mediocre level. Further, it has other benefits like being MUCH easier to set up well isolated dev environments with Docker than with Chef. Since we switched we can usually have someone running the dev environment and tests within an hour or so of unboxing their laptop. With chef running the whole thing from scratch took that long by itself (after you installed all the software) and usually failed. And the idea that it is too complicated for something simple- I built a sample blogging app that you can deploy to a digital ocean or ec2 machine with like 3 or 4 commands (https://github.com/pbecotte/devblog https://github.com/pbecotte/devblog). The system we have built at work has 8 separate services between a bunch of data stores, background workers, and a couple different pieces of our app- but Docker allows you to run the entire environment on your local machine and then deploy that same setup to our cluster, without any differences to account for making all those apps run on one VM for your local environment (which can get bad when one service requires a different version of a ruby gem than another for example).
    - fpoling 11y ago
alpb 11y ago
> ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker I have not tried it myself personally but I have seen a blog post comparing it to Kubernetes: https://railsadventures.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/why-we-chose-kubernetes-over-ecs/ https://railsadventures.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/why-we-chos... It sounds like ECS is not really there either.

krat0sprakhar 11y ago

Totally agree! To be honest I'm still a bit wary of using ECS via the web console. Too many (new) terms to understand! Thankfully the folks at AWS were smart enough to make a CLI that understands docker-compose. So that's how I ended up using it.

nzoschke 11y ago
We're working on a whole ECS toolkit at http://convox.com/ http://convox.com/. There are similarities to the ECS CLI, but we are going for the whole "batteries included" approach. Builds, Logs, cluster and app scaling, encrypted environment, and more.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gtaylor 11y ago

> ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker ECS is AWS-specific, which is perfectly fine for some. But Kubernetes has been amazing for us. It abstracts many of the differences between AWS/Google Cloud, it's open source, and is far more powerful and flexible. The only issue right now is that setting the cluster up involves running some shell scripts (yuck). We use Google Container Engine (hosted Kubernetes on Google Cloud), so we don't have to deal with that, but the option is there should we ever need to go multi-cloud. Figured I'd toss that out there for anyone struggling with ECS (it can be a bit rigid) or keeping an eye on things beyond AWS. Kubernetes is still young and rough in areas, but it is a nice, opinionated way to orchestrate containers.

merb 11y ago
wow so instead of running my configuration management stuff I know need to either: - be on aws - be on gcloud - any other cloud that has docker support out of the box OR: I need docker + a configuration management to setup my environment, or I need to somehow manage my coreos configs. Oh and finally don't forget to run a network over a network cause it's dockerish so for most clouds this means we run a network on a network which runs a network. docker adds so much complexity. people just don't see this right upfront and use most of their time into these stuff, but there are easier ways to deploy. YES if you are really big and if your servers needs to scale way beyond the most than you need it probably since configuration management won't help you and setting up servers even in the cloud take some time looking at some netflix articles. however i just don't get it why people use their time for docker when there are other things to do in their programs.
- pbecotte 11y ago
  But it doesn't really, it is just another tool to learn like your configuration management software. Honestly, learning Docker to a high level was WAY easier than getting my Chef knowledge to a mediocre level. Further, it has other benefits like being MUCH easier to set up well isolated dev environments with Docker than with Chef. Since we switched we can usually have someone running the dev environment and tests within an hour or so of unboxing their laptop. With chef running the whole thing from scratch took that long by itself (after you installed all the software) and usually failed. And the idea that it is too complicated for something simple- I built a sample blogging app that you can deploy to a digital ocean or ec2 machine with like 3 or 4 commands (https://github.com/pbecotte/devblog https://github.com/pbecotte/devblog). The system we have built at work has 8 separate services between a bunch of data stores, background workers, and a couple different pieces of our app- but Docker allows you to run the entire environment on your local machine and then deploy that same setup to our cluster, without any differences to account for making all those apps run on one VM for your local environment (which can get bad when one service requires a different version of a ruby gem than another for example).
  - fpoling 11y ago

alpb 11y ago

> ECS is really the only way I'd go with Docker I have not tried it myself personally but I have seen a blog post comparing it to Kubernetes: https://railsadventures.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/why-we-chose-kubernetes-over-ecs/ https://railsadventures.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/why-we-chos... It sounds like ECS is not really there either.