ECS services can be used to process messages from Amazon SQS queues in a scalable and decoupled manner.
Workflow
- Producer service sends messages to an SQS queue.
- An ECS service (running on EC2 or Fargate) continuously polls the queue for incoming messages.
- Multiple ECS tasks run in parallel (e.g., Task 1, Task 2, Task 3), each processing messages independently.
- ECS Service Auto Scaling increases or decreases the number of tasks based on queue depth or other metrics.
Use Cases
- Event-driven background processing
- Decoupling microservices to improve resilience
- Scalable processing pipelines for workloads such as image processing, order handling, or log ingestion
Key Benefit: ECS + SQS enables highly parallel, fault-tolerant message processing without tight coupling between producers and consumers.