AWS EKS vs. ECS vs. Fargate vs. kOps: Where to Manage Your Kubernetes in 2022?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers two Kubernetes-related services: Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). ECS is a container orchestration service, while EKS is a managed service for running Kubernetes clusters on AWS. Both services have their own unique features and benefits, making them suitable for different use cases. ECS is a scalable container orchestration platform that allows users to run, stop, and manage containers in a cluster. It can be used with EC2 instances or AWS Fargate, which manages the underlying server used to run Kubernetes on ECS. Users of ECS can take advantage of Amazon EC2 instances or AWS Fargate. Using EC2 instances makes sense if you expect to maximize cluster utilization. Fargate comes in handy when utilization falls under specific thresholds. EKS, on the other hand, assists teams in deploying Kubernetes clusters on AWS without the need to manually install Kubernetes on EC2 instances. It is based on Kubernetes, an open-source technology, and offers more help from the community compared to ECS. While ECS doesn't come with any extra charges, EKS does – $0.1 per hour per Kubernetes cluster. Deploying clusters on ECS is much easier than on EKS since the latter requires expert configuration. Many companies across various industries use Amazon EKS to run their Kubernetes clusters, including HSBC, Amazon.com, GoDaddy, Delivery Hero, and Mercari.