Amazon ECS – EC2 Launch Type

• Amazon ECS lets you run Docker containers on AWS-managed orchestration while keeping full control of the underlying EC2 infrastructure.

• With the EC2 launch type, you manage the Amazon EC2 instances that form your ECS cluster, but ECS handles the scheduling and running of containers.

How It Works

• You provision and manage EC2 instances in your ECS cluster.

• Each instance runs the ECS Agent, which registers the instance with the cluster and communicates with the ECS control plane.

• ECS schedules ECS Tasks (containers) across available EC2 instances.

• You control instance types, AMIs, networking, and scaling policies.

Key Points

• More control over infrastructure, including custom AMIs, storage, and networking.

• Manual responsibility for scaling, patching, and replacing EC2 instances.

• Can integrate with Auto Scaling Groups for automated scaling based on demand.

• Best for workloads that need specialized hardware (e.g., GPU instances) or custom configurations at the host level.