AWS compute patterns — ECS, EKS & Lambda
Core details
| Choice | Sweet spot | Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Lambda | event-driven, bursty, short executions | cold start, 15m cap, VPC ENI latency (mitigations evolve) |
| ECS Fargate | containers without managing nodes | task CPU/mem pricing, platform versions |
| ECS EC2 | need custom AMIs, GPUs, cost at steady high load | ops of capacity |
| EKS | Kubernetes standard, multi-team platform | control plane cost, complexity |
RDS / data in private subnets; tasks in VPC need security groups, NAT for outbound depending on design.
ALB → target group → ECS service / EKS Ingress — health checks align with app readiness.
Understanding
Lambda for transform + orchestration glue; long-lived HTTP APIs often ECS/EKS for connection pooling and predictable latency—interviews reward honest boundaries.
Senior understanding
Provisioned concurrency / always-on tasks trade money for tail latency.IAM least privilege per task role.Secrets from Secrets Manager / SSM — not env in CI logs.
Diagram
Loading diagram…
See also
Last updated on
Spotted something unclear or wrong on this page?