Unleashing the power of Amazon ECS for platform teams (SVS330)

Leveraging ECS to Optimize Your Platform Strategy

Key Takeaways

  1. Spectrum of Platform Patterns:

    • Account as a Service: Developers have full autonomy and flexibility, but less standardization.
    • Platform as a Service: Developers focus on business logic, platform team manages the infrastructure.
    • Cluster as a Service: Platform team provides pre-configured clusters, developers manage services and tasks.
    • Template as a Service: Platform team provides infrastructure-as-code templates, developers consume and customize them.
  2. Benefits of ECS:

    • Managed control plane, deep integration with other AWS services.
    • Security features like IAM, Guard Duty, VPC Flow Logs.
    • Serverless compute with AWS Fargate.
    • Scalability and high-performance for critical workloads.
  3. Fanny May's Journey:

    • Transformed legacy loan accounting system using ECS and other AWS services.
    • Enabled self-service and increased developer productivity through an Internal Developer Platform (IDP).
    • Achieved 65% faster processing, 33% lower costs, and improved security and governance.

Platform Patterns and ECS

Account as a Service

  • Developers have full autonomy and flexibility, but less standardization.
  • Supports a wide range of workload types, with full isolation between teams.
  • Developers take on cognitive load for troubleshooting and standardization.

Platform as a Service

  • Developers focus on building business logic, platform team manages the infrastructure.
  • Reduces cognitive load for developers, but may be restrictive for certain workload types.
  • Platform team needs to build and operate the platform, which can be a burden.

Cluster as a Service

  • Platform team provides pre-configured clusters, developers manage services and tasks.
  • Developers have autonomy over their applications, with reduced cognitive load.
  • Shared responsibility model between platform and developers for certain aspects (e.g., load balancing, security).

Template as a Service

  • Platform team provides infrastructure-as-code templates, developers consume and customize them.
  • Developers can get started quickly, platform team can scale by providing reusable templates.
  • Developers are still exposed to infrastructure, but can have Escape hatches for customization.

Fanny May's ECS Journey

  • Transformed legacy loan accounting system using ECS and other AWS services.
  • Leveraged ECS template as a service pattern, with a custom low-code platform.
  • Enabled self-service and increased developer productivity through an Internal Developer Platform (IDP).
  • Achieved 65% faster processing, 33% lower costs, and improved security and governance.
  • Emphasized the importance of developer experience and "Dev Joy" in the platform design.

Additional Resources

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