ECS and EKS, container orchestration services, are extremely popular for a good reason. Because they are production-ready managed services, they decrease the friction of container adoption and continuing operational overhead. One of the main advantages of using containers is that they are extremely portable, allowing DevOps teams to concentrate on application functionality rather than environmental settings.
However, every container orchestration platform has implementation-specific needs and feature sets. While the same container image used across many platforms, the setup, deployment, discovery, and communication patterns will frequently differ depending on the destination.
While the portability of containers makes it easier to get an application operating in the cloud, high-performing and robust designs still require knowledge of the platform’s intricacies.
Alternatively, they necessitate a reduction in administrative/management overhead (i.e., running bare-metal Kubernetes).
Regardless of the business driver, these difficulties only worsen when contemplating hybrid or multi-cloud architectures. Whether the organization wants to run specific workloads on-premises due to compliance or security requirements, leverage existing data center hardware for cost optimization, or run a hot-standby DR environment for availability, context, or platform-dependent configuration will almost certainly be required. Multi-cloud or hybrid architecture, by its very nature, poses issues because it leaves the business with numerous unique infrastructures to maintain, each requiring different skills, experience, and functional roles.
One of the cloud’s main value propositions is how easily unified infrastructure can be managed. Thankfully, AWS has a solution for operating several container orchestration platforms: ECS Anywhere and EKS Anywhere! The “Anywhere” platform unifies the control plane across many networks, allowing ECS and EKS clusters to run on any hardware or cloud provider. This hybrid architecture vision allows us to run a container outside of AWS with the same configuration and patterns as inside, while still enjoying the benefits and support of a reliable, SLA-backed managed service.
Despite their identical titles, there is a significant difference between the two products. ECS is significantly more approachable than EKS, but it is also far less flexible, and their respective Anywhere versions have similar dynamics.
Anywhere ECS
We can deploy and manage containerized workloads on any infrastructure with ECS Anywhere, which provides the same ECS user and API experience while reducing the need to manage multiple architectures. Cluster and workload management, scheduling, and monitoring tools are similar in both on-premises and cloud implementations.
In the control panel, via API, or using standard IAC (Infrastructure-As-Code) technologies like Terraform, we may define ECS clusters, whether ECS or ECS Anywhere. Aside from the standard ECS Agent and Docker, there is one more requirement to join an ECS Anywhere cluster: the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent). This agent-based software runs Amazon EC2 at the edge. It supports id deployments, allowing Systems Manager to perform unified instance administration, configuration, and patching activities, thereby transforming any machine in any location into an SSM Managed Instance.
The Amazon ECS control plane remains in the region with ECS Anywhere. ECS Anywhere can access through the same interface as ECS. ECS Anywhere, moreover, has no impact on the on-premises infrastructures required for application deployment, operations, or maintenance. Only the data required to manage a task send to the Amazon control plane. All other data stay on-premises, allowing for the same level of protection and governance.
ECS Anywhere works with any infrastructure, including virtual machines, bare metal, Raspberry Pi, and other supported operating systems and architecture hardware. ECS Anywhere tasks continue to execute until manually halted if the non-AWS infrastructure loses connectivity. Although connectivity is only necessary to update or scale tasks or link other AWS services in the same region, it can have repercussions for regularly used supplementary services such as ECR or CloudWatch. The node credentials are automatically renewed when network connectivity is restored and regular functionality is restored. There are various conditions to consider before adopting any service, especially ones aimed at hybrid infrastructure, as they may not meet your specific use case.
We can use existing infrastructure while keeping the simplicity of ECS Anywhere’s traditional container management orchestration and control. Companies who want to manage ECS instances operating on-premises but don’t want to deal with the hassle of setting up and administering Kubernetes clusters should use ECS Anywhere. That being said, those who do have a solution, thanks to Amazon!
Read more: Guide for AWS Migration Readiness Assessment
Anywhere EKS
EKS provides a (mostly) blank canvas with many extensible configuration options and often the tool of choice for customers focused on building scalable, complex, and distributed platforms. While ECS is far easier to adopt and manage, EKS provides a (mostly) blank canvas with many extensible configuration options, and is often the tool of choice for customers focused on building scalable, complex, and distributed platforms. While not every workload can or should be performed on Kubernetes, most classic counter-arguments and hazards have been addressed. EKS, in my opinion, provides more workload and configuration flexibility than any other AWS mAWS-managedice, but these features come at a premium. On top of the standard AWS compute/service charges, Kuberetes demands a tremendous degree of subject expertise, forethought, and preparation.
Through the EKS Connector and the open-source EKS Distro, EKS Anywhere apparently enables “centralized” visibility of various Kubernetes clusters. This distribution adds support for legacy Kubernetes versions that are no longer maintained by the community and various opinionated component configurations and integration testing. It does, however, make some restrictive assumptions about the cluster’s design and expected infrastructure.
Currently, EKS Anywhere can only run on VMware vSphere, but it does support the building of local clusters using Docker, which is great for local testing, and it also supports IRSA (with a little bit of effort). Amazon plans to enable alternative deployment methods, including bare metal, before the end of the year. EKS Anywhere is not yet a sufa goodkey solution for extensively customized clusters due to the EKS distro’s opinionated configuration and platform requirements. For regular operations, the end result is easier cluster creation and fewer architectural decisions, and the ability to have a consolidated view of all clusters, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
Amazon’s “Shared Responsibility” concept applies to EKS Anywhere, and AWS provides a high-level comparison of the differences between the managed and “anywhere” versions and their respective support. ObvioAnAnywhere cluster contains components that are outside of AWS’s support scope, but clients with an Enterprise Maintenance Agreement can rely on AWS for EKS Anywhere cluster support. In addition, useful tools like Weave’s eksctl can help simplify setup and “Day 2” processes. I was also pleased to see Cillium as the default CNI in EKS Anywhere; I’ve recently become interested in BPF for its observability capabilities, which Cillium combines with extensive security and encryption options, as well as easy-to-manage policy enforcement (I’ve been using it on my clusters and am a big fan).
Is EKS Anywhere capable of resolving all of the issues associated with running numerous or federated clusters in a hybrid architecture? By no means, but it does ease aspects of the model’s design and execution, and as someone who adores EKS, I’m enthusiastic about the product’s future. Please visit the FAQs and related materials for additional information on EKS Anywhere.
Summary
Regulatory and compliance constraints, security requirements, and interaction with current systems are all considerations that may force a corporation to retain a hybrid Kubernetes strategy. They may want to take advantage of existing infrastructure investment to save cloud expenses or increase resiliency. These needs used to involve maintaining numerous, independent operating environments, generally with diffedifferentiguration and deployment options, whether running containers on ECS or EKS. The new AWS Anywhere features for ECS and EKS are a solid first step in unifying and alleviating some of the resulting difficulties. However, there are still a lot of design decisions to make, such as federation, service discovery, unified monitoring, and secrets management, to name a few.
We can orchestrate our ECS containers from the ECS control plane regardless of which worker runs the container with AWS ECS Anywhere. It can be in AWS, on-premises, or with another cloud provider, and it allows us to manage and monitor our container workloads from a single location.
Kubernetes introduces extra obstacles and intricacies for a unified hybrid experience, let alone an easily managed one, due to its flexibility and sheer quantity of build and configuration options. Amazon’s first step toward accomplishing this objective is EKS Anywhere (I would love to see better incorporation of configuration management features, ala Anthos). EKS Anywhere enables us to create Kubernetes clusters in an opinionated. Best practices configuration and administer them through the AWS Console’s EKS Connector.
Hybrid architectures are exceedingly complex by their nature; there are considerably more hazards and design decisions to consider. In a cloud-native environment, what could seem like a simple design or tools decision can soon become a web of diverse requirements, administration overhead, and failure points to consider. ECS Anywhere, and to a lesser extent EKS Anywhere, provide a framework to make a living in a hybrid environment less difficult. Given the development and advancements I’ve witnessed in EKS since its initial release, I’m looking forward to seeing how these new offerings develop.
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