About the course
This focused, one-day technical briefing is designed for development and DevOps teams looking to leverage AWS Fargate to eliminate EC2 management overhead. The session demystifies the Fargate model, clearly articulating the difference between Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) on Fargate.
Through technical explanations and deployment demonstrations, participants will learn the essential components: the Task Definition, network configuration (VPC and security groups), and the resulting operational and cost implications. The core goal is to enable teams to assess which applications are ready for Fargate migration and how to integrate Fargate seamlessly into their existing CI/CD pipelines.
Instructor-led online and in-house face-to-face options are available - as part of a wider customised training programme, or as a standalone workshop, on-site at your offices or at one of many flexible meeting spaces in the UK and around the World.
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- Articulate the Value: Explain the operational and financial benefits of moving from EC2-backed containers to Fargate.
- Differentiate Services: Understand the core differences and decision criteria for choosing between ECS on Fargate and EKS on Fargate.
- Master Task Definitions: Accurately configure Fargate-specific parameters (CPU, memory, networking mode) in a Task Definition.
- Integrate with AWS: Configure Fargate to securely access other AWS resources using Task IAM Roles.
- Monitor and Troubleshoot: Use AWS CloudWatch and integrated logging to monitor Fargate tasks and diagnose common deployment issues.
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Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Cloud Architects, and Technical Leads currently using Docker containers and working within the AWS ecosystem.
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Attendees should have prior experience working with Docker containers, basic familiarity with AWS networking concepts (VPC, Security Groups), and a general understanding of Elastic Container Service (ECS) or Kubernetes.
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This AWS Fargate course is available for private / custom delivery for your team - as an in-house face-to-face workshop at your location of choice, or as online instructor-led training via MS Teams (or your own preferred platform).
Get in touch to find out how we can deliver tailored training which focuses on your project requirements and learning goals.
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Fargate: The Serverless Container Model
The Problem Fargate Solves: Eliminating patching, capacity planning, and EC2 instance management.
Fargate vs. EC2: A detailed comparison of the infrastructure layer and the operational burden.
Core Concepts: Tasks, Task Definitions, and Services—how these map to the lifecycle of a container application.
The Cost Model: Understanding usage-based billing—paying only for the CPU and memory consumed by the running task.
Decision Framework: ECS on Fargate vs. EKS on Fargate (when to use which based on existing orchestration expertise).
Module 2: Building and Configuring a Fargate Task
Task Definition Deep Dive:
Defining container images and essential environment variables.
Setting mandatory Fargate resource limits (CPU and Memory allocation).
Networking Mode: The necessity of awsvpc mode and its implications.
Identity and Security:
Task IAM Role: Configuring least-privilege permissions for the container to access resources (e.g., S3, RDS, Secrets Manager).
Execution Role: The role Fargate uses to pull images and publish logs.
Networking Requirements: Configuring security groups and subnets to allow communication between Fargate tasks and other VPC resources (e.g., databases).
Hands-on Demonstration: Creating a production-ready ECS Task Definition tailored for Fargate.
Deployment, Scaling, and Observability
Service Definition: Creating a Service to manage the desired count, load balancing, and self-healing features of the tasks.
Elastic Scaling: Implementing Service Auto Scaling based on application metrics (CPU utilization, request count) to handle traffic spikes.
Logging and Monitoring:
Integrating container logs directly with AWS CloudWatch Logs.
Using CloudWatch Metrics to monitor performance, resource consumption, and scaling activity.
Troubleshooting: Common Fargate errors (Insufficient CPU/Memory, ImagePullBackOff) and how to diagnose them via the CloudWatch console.
Hands-on Demonstration: Deploying a sample application as a Fargate Service and configuring a simple Application Load Balancer (ALB).
Integration and Next Steps
Fargate and CI/CD: Integrating deployment into common pipelines (e.g., CodePipeline, Jenkins, GitHub Actions) using the ECS CLI or CloudFormation/Terraform.
Application Modernization Path: When Fargate is a better choice than Lambda for containerized workloads.
Q&A and Strategy Session: Discussion of specific organizational use cases and challenges for Fargate migration.
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Core Fargate Architecture and Documentation
AWS Fargate Product Page & Overview: The primary landing page for Fargate, providing high-level context on its benefits and use cases. https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
ECS on Fargate Documentation: The definitive technical guide for implementing Fargate with the Elastic Container Service (ECS), including service and task definitions. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/AWS_Fargate.html
Task Definition Parameters Reference: Crucial reference for Module 2, detailing all required parameters, including how to set CPU, memory, and networking mode (awsvpc). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/task_definition_parameters.html
Cost, Pricing, and Security
AWS Fargate Pricing: Essential for C-suite and technical leads, this explains the resource-based cost model (per vCPU and GB of memory per hour) and how to estimate expenditure. https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/pricing/
ECS Task IAM Roles: Best practices for defining the permissions that the container application uses to securely interact with other AWS services (S3, DynamoDB, etc.). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/task-iam-roles.html
Observability and Deployment
Monitoring Fargate with CloudWatch: A guide on accessing and analyzing logs and metrics from Fargate tasks, necessary for troubleshooting and auto-scaling decisions (Module 3). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/cloudwatch-metrics.html
CI/CD Deployment for ECS: Documentation outlining how to integrate Fargate deployments into common CI/CD pipelines (e.g., using AWS CodePipeline or third-party tools via the ECS CLI). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/patterns/automatically-build-ci-cd-pipelines-and-amazon-ecs-clusters-for-microservices-using-aws-cdk.html
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