I'm a solo developer currently using ECS Fargate for my projects because it spares me the hassle of managing EC2 instances. However, I have some questions before I fully commit:
1. Just how much more am I paying for the convenience of Fargate compared to using ECS EC2?
2. What EC2 instance types match up to common Fargate task requirements, like 1 vCPU and 2GB of memory?
I'm really interested in hearing from anyone who's gone through the process of switching between Fargate and EC2, and what factors ultimately influenced your choice.
1 Answer
I've always gone the opposite way, migrating services from EC2 to Fargate. In my experience, the costs between the two are similar since AWS charges based on usage rather than the service type. But with Fargate, there's definitely less maintenance to worry about, which I appreciate.
I've noticed that Fargate can be noticeably more expensive for smaller tasks. For instance, 1 vCPU on Fargate costs around $30/month, which you can beat with some EC2 instance types.
Also, Fargate doesn't give you access to the underlying host machine, which might limit some operations. Are there significant drawbacks because of that?