What is our primary use case?
We are using Amazon Elastic Container Service for Docker-based configuration. Previously, we had to manually go into an instance and then issue all Docker agents and instances. Now, we are using Amazon ECS to automate all of our Docker containers.
We are deploying our microservices architecture in the ECS container install. We are using ECS as a service.
What is most valuable?
It has an Auto Scaling group feature. We can use this feature to have an Auto Scaling group to specify a minimum and maximum count for all types of configurations. Based on the specified values, Amazon Elastic Container Service scales the required CPU environmental metrics.
What needs improvement?
Sometimes, the instances fail under the ECS container cluster, and we have to manually go and find out the black sheep in the ECS container instance.
We had an issue earlier where one of the instances under the ECS container cluster went down, and we were not able to identify that instance. The instance got terminated, but a new instance did not come up. Therefore, I had to manually get that instance up. It could be optimized better. In production, we normally cannot sustain such things. It can be optimized in terms of instances, durability, and serving the requests of customers.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been dealing with Amazon Elastic Container Service for three to four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's good. Our platform stability has rated from 97%, 98% to 99.99%. We are pretty much happy with the stability of Amazon Elastic Container Service. We have been allocated a relationship manager, and he will be more than happy to offer all the technical specs and the building details. We didn't find any issues as of now.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable. We haven't found any issues as of now in our organization. It's good.
How are customer service and support?
It's very good. We'll be getting timely updates about the new features and objects available. They will know how we are deploying and whether we want any technical support. If you're going for a long, big bang approach of releasing the product as a whole, they'll be warming out ELBs. We don't know how ELB warming works out. They'll provide some extra help. So, technical support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. We'll be using AWS CLI commands for initializing the cluster. It is not hard to set up. It is pretty straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed it ourselves. We have four DevOps engineers and four AWS engineers for a team of 150 developers. We have enough for the complete platform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't exactly deal with the pricing. We have a separate Infra team that deals with the pricing. They are more into the scalability part.
Based on our requirements, the pricing will increase. The automation teams will test some of the benefits to see how can we can optimize the cost. They'll have a security manager connection and some alerts based upon the usage to see how to reduce the building cost based upon the installations.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Amazon Elastic Container Service. They have a big R&D team, and they'll be providing good features for customers. I think AWS has been pretty good on this R&D thing. I would like to appreciate their team, which continuously looks into customer satisfaction and comes up with a new bunch of services every time. They're moving to a customer-centric approach.
We aren't looking into specific new features. We are in the testing phase currently. If they are releasing some new features, we should definitely use them based on our requirements.
I would rate Amazon Elastic Container Service an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.