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I know this won't be helpful to folks committed to EKS, but AWS ECS (i.e. running docker containers with AWS controlling) does a really great job on this, we've

I know this won't be helpful to folks committed to EKS, but AWS ECS (i.e. running docker containers with AWS controlling) does a really great job on this, we've been running ECS for years (at multiple companies), and basically no hiccups. One of my former co-workers went to a K8S shop, and longs for the simplicity of ECS. No software is a panacea, but ECS seems to be one of those "it just works" technologies.

GiorgioG 2y ago
We've been moving away from K8S to ECS...it just works without all the complexity.
layoric 2y ago
Completely agree, unless you are operating a platform for others to deploy to, ECS is a lot simpler, and works really well for a lot of common setups.
FridgeSeal 2y ago
> One of my former co-workers went to a K8S shop, and longs for the simplicity of ECS. I was using K8s previously, and I’m currently using ECS in my current team, and I hate it. I would _much _ rather have K8s back. The UX is all over the place, none of my normal tooling works, deployment configs are so much worse than the K8s equivalent.
- easton 2y ago
  I think like a lot of things, once you’re used to having the knobs of k8s and its DX, you’ll want them always. But a lot of teams adopt k8s because they need a containerized service in AWS, and have no real opinions about how, and in those cases ECS is almost always easier (even with all its quirks). (And it’s free, if you don’t mind the mild lock-in).
pmig 2y ago
I agree that ECS works great for stateless containerized workloads. But you will need other AWS-managed services for state (RDS), caching (ElastiCache), and queueing (SQS). So your application is now suddenly spread across multiple services, and you'll need an IaC tool like Terraform, etc. The beauty (and the main reason we use K8s) is that everything is inside our cluster. We use cloudnative-pg, Redis pods, and RabbitMQ if needed, so everything is maintained in a GitOps project, and we have no IaC management overhead. (We do manually provision S3 buckets for backups and object storage, though.)
- placardloop 2y ago
  Mentioning “no IaC management overhead” is weird. If you’re not using IaC, you’re doing it wrong. However, GitOps is IaC, just by another name, so you actually do have IaC “overhead”.
  - Lucasoato 2y ago
    Exactly, not only because Flux/ArgoCD are inherently some sort of IaC themselves, but also because on top of those tools you’ll need to have Terraform to manage the K8s cluster as well as a good practice.
  - VectorLock 2y ago
    And most GitOps workflows have considerably more complexity and overhead than your typical Terraform "IaC" workflow.
- williamdclt 2y ago
  Many companies run k8s for compute and use rds/sqs/redis outside of it. For example RDS is not just hosted PG, it has a whole bunch of features that don’t come out of the box (you do pay for it, I’m not giving an opinion as to whether it’s worth the price)
  - murukesh_s 2y ago
    Yea RDS makes your life easy, notifications and easy application of security patches both OS and DB level (minor version upgrades). Easy upgrade of major versions, easy upgrade of storage, RAM and compute (but not so easy to downgrade), easy options for replication, Blue/Green deployments etc to name a few.
  - master_crab 2y ago
    Yup. We do that. Anything stateful is not allowed inside the cluster. PVs are annoying enough without having to manage a DB bolted onto what was originally designed for stateless web services.
icedchai 2y ago
If you're on GCP, Google Cloud Run also "just works" quite well, too.
- holografix 2y ago
  Amazing product, doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. ECS is a hot spaghetti mess in comparison.
jamesfinlayson 2y ago
Checks out - I was reading the rest of this and thought "geez, I use ECS and it's nowhere near as complicated as this". Glad I wasn't missing anything. I've never used Kubernetes myself, but ECS seems to "just work" for my use case of run a simple web app with autoscaling and no downtime.

GiorgioG 2y ago

We've been moving away from K8S to ECS...it just works without all the complexity.

layoric 2y ago

Completely agree, unless you are operating a platform for others to deploy to, ECS is a lot simpler, and works really well for a lot of common setups.

FridgeSeal 2y ago

> One of my former co-workers went to a K8S shop, and longs for the simplicity of ECS. I was using K8s previously, and I’m currently using ECS in my current team, and I hate it. I would _much _ rather have K8s back. The UX is all over the place, none of my normal tooling works, deployment configs are so much worse than the K8s equivalent.

easton 2y ago
I think like a lot of things, once you’re used to having the knobs of k8s and its DX, you’ll want them always. But a lot of teams adopt k8s because they need a containerized service in AWS, and have no real opinions about how, and in those cases ECS is almost always easier (even with all its quirks). (And it’s free, if you don’t mind the mild lock-in).

pmig 2y ago

I agree that ECS works great for stateless containerized workloads. But you will need other AWS-managed services for state (RDS), caching (ElastiCache), and queueing (SQS). So your application is now suddenly spread across multiple services, and you'll need an IaC tool like Terraform, etc. The beauty (and the main reason we use K8s) is that everything is inside our cluster. We use cloudnative-pg, Redis pods, and RabbitMQ if needed, so everything is maintained in a GitOps project, and we have no IaC management overhead. (We do manually provision S3 buckets for backups and object storage, though.)

placardloop 2y ago
Mentioning “no IaC management overhead” is weird. If you’re not using IaC, you’re doing it wrong. However, GitOps is IaC, just by another name, so you actually do have IaC “overhead”.
- Lucasoato 2y ago
  Exactly, not only because Flux/ArgoCD are inherently some sort of IaC themselves, but also because on top of those tools you’ll need to have Terraform to manage the K8s cluster as well as a good practice.
- VectorLock 2y ago
  And most GitOps workflows have considerably more complexity and overhead than your typical Terraform "IaC" workflow.
williamdclt 2y ago
Many companies run k8s for compute and use rds/sqs/redis outside of it. For example RDS is not just hosted PG, it has a whole bunch of features that don’t come out of the box (you do pay for it, I’m not giving an opinion as to whether it’s worth the price)
- murukesh_s 2y ago
  Yea RDS makes your life easy, notifications and easy application of security patches both OS and DB level (minor version upgrades). Easy upgrade of major versions, easy upgrade of storage, RAM and compute (but not so easy to downgrade), easy options for replication, Blue/Green deployments etc to name a few.
- master_crab 2y ago
  Yup. We do that. Anything stateful is not allowed inside the cluster. PVs are annoying enough without having to manage a DB bolted onto what was originally designed for stateless web services.

icedchai 2y ago

If you're on GCP, Google Cloud Run also "just works" quite well, too.

holografix 2y ago
Amazing product, doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. ECS is a hot spaghetti mess in comparison.

jamesfinlayson 2y ago

Checks out - I was reading the rest of this and thought "geez, I use ECS and it's nowhere near as complicated as this". Glad I wasn't missing anything. I've never used Kubernetes myself, but ECS seems to "just work" for my use case of run a simple web app with autoscaling and no downtime.