Introduction to Elastic Container Service (AWS ECS)

introduction

  • container was standardised in England in 1766
  • 1958 patent on containers
  • the key concept if the abstraction
  • it happens with programming languages as well
  • or even computing platforms
  • bare metal -> vms ->containers -> serverless
  • containers were supported by
    • solaris (zones)
    • freebsd (jails)
    • unix (chroot)
  • docker popularized containers
    • released in 2013
  • rise of microservices
  • platform with docker
  • bare metal
    • server hardware
    • os
    • libraries
    • apps
  • vms
    • virtualisation platform on top os os
  • containers
    • shares os kernel
    • containers images are lightweight
    • image is a set of instructions for creating containers

microservices and managements

  • small independent process - definition from wikipedia
  • characteristics of microservices
    • smart endpoints dumb pipes
    • products not projects
    • design for failure
    • evolutionary design
  • twelve factor app
    • code base
    • dependencies
      • expose dependencies
    • disposability
  • containers power modern microservices
  • cluster management is hard
  • offers for management of containers
    • ecs
    • docker swarm
    • k8s
    • marathon
  • gopro plus - customer example
    • runs on aws
      • devops team
      • iams roles to each service running
      • less cluster cost
    • before that they had orchestration issues
    • deploys took long