How to decide which ECS tool to use?

Question

I am at a bit of a crossroads here. My goal is to automate creating my ECS architecture and deploying my docker-compose services to ECS Fargate, but there are so many ways to do it!

Hoping to get some insight from the community on picking the right tool for the job. What are the use cases for each of these? When should I pick one over the other?

Docker ECS integration
https://docs.docker.com/cloud/ecs-integration/

ecs-cli
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/ECS_CLI.html

AWS Copilot
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/AWS_Copilot.html

AWS CLI ecs
https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/ecs/index.html

Answer 1

This is how I am breaking it down:

• Docker Compose / ECS integration: use this if you are deep into Docker already are in love with the compose syntax. If you are not already in love with it you should because it's a very simple syntax
• ECS CLI: this is the previous version of the Copilot CLI. ECS CLI had native ECS components/workflows to it + some level of docker compose compatibility. We have since improved the workflows in Copilot and forked compose support into the Docker Compose / ECS integration above. TL/DR: don't use ECS CLI
• Copilot CLI: this is a very easy way to start with containers on AWS ECS. If you don't know much about Docker and you don't need to become an expert in containers Copilot is the right approach. Only drawback (IMO) is that it doesn't really support a proper IaC pattern yet (example).
• AWS CLI (ecs namespace): this is just the CLI manifestation of the 1:1 mapping of the core ECS APIs. This is most likely way too low level for you to extract value (unless you are doing very deep things). For example one Copilot command or a few Docker Compose lines could easily be exploded in dozens of AWS CLI commands.

I'd add CDK to your list: CDK is a representation of AWS constructs (including ECS) that could be represented with standard programming languages. The good thing about CDK is that it could map 1:1 raw API/Cloudformation constructs but it also ships with higher level and more abstracted libraries that allows you to express in a few lines of code content that would require hundreds of lines of CFN.

If you are deep into compose (as it seems from your original message) you may want to have a look at this approach.