AWS for Developers and Application Architects - Part 5 - AWS EC2 Container Service - Fargate

I am going to start couple of blogs to cover AWS(Amazon Web Services) concepts from developer point of view. Here is part 5, Refer Part 4 here. More to come

Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) supports Docker containers and uses a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances. ECS provides an API to launch and manage containers in a cluster. It also enables the use of standard AWS features, such as security groups, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Identity and Access Management (IAM). There is no additional charge for Amazon EC2 Container Service; users pay only for AWS resources, for example, EC2 instances.

As of now, it only supports Docker

Amazon ECS has two modes: Fargate launch type and EC2 launch type. With Fargate launch type, all you have to do is package your application in containers, specify the CPU and memory requirements, define networking and IAM policies, and launch the application. EC2 launch type allows you to have server-level, more granular control over the infrastructure that runs your container applications. With EC2 launch type, you can use Amazon ECS to manage a cluster of servers and schedule placement of containers on the servers. Amazon ECS keeps track of all the CPU, memory and other resources in your cluster, and also finds the best server for a container to run on based on your specified resource requirements. You are responsible for provisioning, patching, and scaling clusters of servers. You can decide which type of server to use, which applications and how many containers to run in a cluster to optimize utilization, and when you should add or remove servers from a cluster. EC2 launch type gives you more control of your server clusters and provides a broader range of customization options, which might be required to support some specific applications or possible compliance and government requirements.


Fargate is a compute engine for Amazon ECS that allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters. With AWS Fargate, you no longer have to provision, configure, and scale clusters of virtual machines to run containers. This removes the need to choose server types, decide when to scale your clusters, or optimize cluster packing. AWS Fargate removes the need for you to interact with or think about servers or clusters. Fargate lets you focus on designing and building your applications instead of managing the infrastructure that runs them

AWS for Developers and Application Architects - Part 4 - SQS and SNS

SNS(Simple Notification Service) : SNS is Amazon Simple Notification Service is fully managed push notification service that lets you send individual messages or to bulk messages to large numbers of recipients. Amazon SNS makes it simple and cost effective to send push notifications to mobile device users, email recipients or even send messages to other distributed services.

A distributed publish-subscribe system. Messages are pushed to subscribers as and when they are sent by publishers to SNS ,SNS supports several end points such as sms, http end point, email and SQS. If you want unknown number and type of subscribers to receive messages, you need SNS.

With Amazon SNS, you can send push notifications to Apple, Google, Fire OS, and Windows devices , You can use SNS to send SMS messages to mobile device users in the US or to email recipients worldwide.

Amazon AWS SQS( Simple Queue Service) 

SQS is distributed queuing system. Messages are not pushed to receivers. Receivers have to poll SQS to receive messages. Messages can't be received by multiple receivers at the same time. Any one receiver can receive a message, process and delete it. Other receivers do not receive the same message later. Polling inherently introduces some latency in message delivery in SQS unlike SNS where messages are immediately pushed to subscribers.

SQS is mainly used to decouple applications or integrate applications. Messages can be stored in SQS for short duration of time (max 14 days). SNS distributes several copies of message to several subscribers. For example, lets say you want to replicate data generated by an application to several storage systems. You could use SNS and send this data to multiple subscribers, each replicating the messages it receives to different storage systems (s3, hard disk on your host, database, etc.).

AWS for Developers and Application Architects - Part 3 - AWS Proprietary Databases

I am going to start couple of blogs to cover AWS(Amazon Web Services) concepts from developer point of view. Here is part 3, Refer Part 2 here. More to come

In my previous blog I mentioned about AWS DB offerings. Here I'm going to introduce Amazon's own Databases

Amazon Aurora

Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backup. Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database.

Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL database

Aurora automatically and continuously monitors and backs up your database to Amazon S3, enabling granular point-in-time recovery. You can monitor database performance using Amazon CloudWatch, Enhanced Monitoring, or Performance Insights.

Your existing databases can be migrated to Aurora, with the help of Amazon provided tools and options.  AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is useful to accelerate your migration from the most common commercial databases.

Recently AWS has added backtrack feature for Aurora, marketing it as 'The undo button for your database'

Amazon DynamoDB

DynamoDB is fully managed nonrelational serverless database that automatically scales throughput up or down, and continuously backs up your data for protection. DynamoDB gives your globally distributed applications fast access to local data by replicating tables across multiple AWS Regions.

Use case include serverless web application, mobile, gaming, ad tech, IoT, and many other applications that need low-latency data access.

Amazon SimpleDB

SimpleDB is NoSQL offering from AWS. SimpleDB's costing is also very low. However, design can impact your costing e.g. Data transferred between Amazon SimpleDB and other Amazon Web Services within the same Region is free of charge. Otherwise you will be charged.

Behind the scenes, Amazon SimpleDB creates and manages multiple geographically distributed replicas of your data automatically to enable high availability and data durability.

AWS for Developers and Application Archiects - Part 2 - AWS Databases

I am going to start couple of blogs to cover AWS(Amazon Web Services) concepts from developer point of view. Here is part 2, Refer Part 1 here. More to come

Amazon Databases is important part and this concept is useful to every user of AWS Cloud. 

Use Case: Managed popular Relational database i.e. Platform as a Service

If you want to have Relational Database with minimal administration, you can choose AWS RDS offering. Currently AWS offers six popular database engines Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server

Use Case: Scalable No-SQL Database
Amazon DynamoDB is best suited for this use case 

Use Case: Smaller No-SQL Database

Amazon SimpleDB, a fully managed service that provides a schema less database, reliability

Use Case: Self Managed Databases
This is an open world where one can use AMIs of EC2 and EBS and get full control over instances. Benefit of this is that you have full controls and some host(say Windows OS) features are also available in DB (say in Sql Server) which otherwise disable in DBaaS. major cons would be that you have to procure license of Database company(though Amazon offers to buy from AWS as well, but you have to pay)


AWS S3 storage is also used for Data Storage and is very useful feature of AWS offerings. However, I'm planning to write about it in detail in Storage blog. 

AWS for Developers and Application Archiects - Part 1 Understanding Basic Terms

I am going to start couple of blogs to cover AWS(Amazon Web Services) concepts from developer point of view. Here is part 1, More to come.

Amazon has created a lot of products to provide Cloud Services. Be it Infrastructure as a Service or Platform as a Service. I have put couple of Terms/Products along with in-premises counterparts

EC2 - a Virtual Machine. It can be any OS like Windows Server, Windows 7/8 or Linux

EBS(Elastic Block Storage) - Storage to be mapped to the EC2 instance. Its like local hard-derive

EFS(Elastic File System) - Storage mapped as derive, alternative of network derives mapped

Glacier Storage - Low cost Storage for inactive Data. Sometimes for regulatory requirement can be marked as WORM(Write once Read Many)

Route 53: Amazon's Proprietary DNS Services.

RDS(Relational Database Services) : Offers Managed Relational Database(be in SQL Server or Oracle). Easy to setup, operate and Scale
DynamoDB - It is fully managed , Scalable NoSQL Database

S3 (Simple Storage Services): Data Storage of any type of Object. Commonly used for Photos, Videos etc