I'm working on updating the cloud infrastructure for a company in France. We have a few micro front-end and back-end services running on Docker, with Redis and PostgreSQL set up across development, staging, and production environments. The aim is to simplify the current over-engineered setup, as our application only sees around 5,000 daily users and isn't expected to scale much. I'm considering using ECS with EC2, incorporating load balancing, auto-scaling, and capacity providers, while also deploying Docker images via GitHub Actions to ECR. However, I'm questioning whether it might be more efficient to just go with two EC2 instances—one for front-end services and one for back-end services—for each environment, using larger hardware and skipping ECS and EKS altogether. Given that there's no intense computing or batch processing, and our user base is mainly in one region, I think it may be excessive to implement load balancing and auto-scaling. What do you all think?
4 Answers
For any production setup, a load balancer is essential. Going with a single EC2 instance might complicate things way more than using ECS, which handles deployment and availability for you. It's really about making your architecture robust and manageable.
I hear you on simplifying things, but consider that even if you think you don't need a load balancer now, having an Application Load Balancer (ALB) adds SSL integration and works really well with ECS. It could save you headaches later on!
Consider what your uptime requirements are like. If they allow for some downtime, EC2 with a lightweight PaaS could work. You might also think about combining the front-end and back-end services into a single container. Just remember to keep some sort of load balancing, even if it's on the VM itself. Also, moving Postgres to RDS could save you a lot of hassle in the long run!
I think you're underestimating the value of a load balancer. It's not just about managing traffic; with an ALB, you get a lot of benefits that just using EC2 won't provide. Plus, when you containerize your workloads, you streamline the development lifecycle significantly, which makes your life much easier in the long run.
But why complicate it with homemade solutions when ECS is available? That's a lot more streamlined!