Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) vs. Portainer

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is well suited where you need the ease of managing the clusters by letting AWS do the stuff for you. Obviously, whenever you want to run the docker based workloads, it is always better to go for either AWS ECS or AWS EKS. If you are interested in staying at AWS only and don't want to be cloud-agnostic, then go for AWS ECS instead of AWS EKS. AWS ECS is cheaper than AWS EKS and also more managed by AWS and better integrated with other AWS services. If you want to run those workloads as serverless, then AWS ECS Fargate is the best option to go with. If you already have a Kubernetes based setup that you want to migrate to AWS, then go for AWS EKS instead of AWS ECS.

Incentivized

We do have a couple of users who are new to Docker and the Linus shell environment. Portainer makes it easy for them to quickly deploy stacks of containers with its web editor to configure docker-compose files with an easy-to-use GUI. Not only does this save time, but it also encourages new users to interact more positively with Docker and Portainer in general.

• One of the biggest advantages is the flexibility to change underlying EC2 instances. As the traffic or demand increases, we can easily change EC2 instances without any issues.
• Amazon ECS APIs are extremely robust and one can start and stop containers by firing one post request only. So, it is not mandatory to keep the demo solutions up for every time. Just at the time of demo fire the command - make the container up and running - do the demo - down the container with API. A simple portal can control every container which helps non-technical (sales, marketing) to do the demo without keeping the solutions up for the entire time frame.

Incentivized

• Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
• RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
• Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents

Incentivized

• A cleaner container service road map
• It would be. nice to have more AI recommended cluster reductions
• The UX could use some simplification

Incentivized

• When setting up static IPs for a new container, having the used ones for a specific network at hand would be cool or something like a mini IPAM of some sort...
• Using the developertools to see "oh, it's a 40x or 500" when something doesn't seem to load because the ui just states "Didn't work" is kinda annoying. expandable toasts or something would be nice.

Incentivized

It is an excellent tool.

It is a clear UI, and it does what it sets out to do, very well

Incentivized

Support is relatively good, although the documentation sometimes is lacking, as well as outdated in our experience, especially when we initiated the process of using this service. But once we found how to assemble things, we haven't really required support from anyone at AWS, the service works without problems so we haven't had the need to contact support, which speaks well of how ECS is built.

Incentivized

One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!

It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.

Incentivized

EKS is a Kubernetes technology and you need to learn Kubernetes and build a cluster before using it. So there's a learning curve here. ECS was easier to implement and simpler to have in our use case. It takes less time to run a workload and make it available.

I am using Rancher in Kubernetes environments. It was really the first product I used with it and never really had time to test out how well Portainer behaves on Kubernetes. For the exact same thing - Docker Swarm management I used Swarmpit some time ago, but I like Portainer better, even though Swarmpit has better cluster visualization then Portainer. Portainer 5 node business edition is really a big plus for me, since it has some really nice features.

Incentivized

• We achieved minimum downtime.
• The autoscaling kept the performance of the services great.
• We saved money by running the workloads on AWS ECS in Fargate mode by having different settings for different services to save on the hardware configuration side as well as having scheduled tasks.

Incentivized

• Increased productivity: Portainer's user-friendly interface and streamlined container management can help increase the productivity of IT teams.
• Cost savings: By simplifying container management, Portainer can help reduce the time and resources required to manage container environments, potentially leading to cost savings.

Incentivized