BYTE the Cloud

Chris 0:00
Hey, there, fellow cloud engineers. You know, sometimes I feel like we spend more time wrestling with server management than actually building cool applications. Oh,

Kelly 0:07
tell me about it. It can be a real headache, right?

Chris 0:09
But what if I told you there's a service that promises to free us from those infrastructure shackles? Okay? Now you have my attention. Well, today we're diving deep into AWS Fargate. It's all about serverless containers and to help us navigate this exciting world, we have a true expert in the house.

Kelly 0:29
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to break down Fargate and how it can really change the game for cloud engineers. Perfect.

Chris 0:35
I think a lot of people are really interested in this. So for those who haven't had a chance to dive into Fargate yet. What is it exactly?

Kelly 0:42
So at its core, Fargate is a serverless Compute Engine designed specifically for running containers. You know how we have Amazon, ECS and EKS? Yeah, for container orchestration, right? Exactly? Fargate integrates seamlessly with both, bringing that serverless experience to both of those services. Okay, I'm

Chris 1:00
starting to see the picture here. So instead of worrying about provisioning EC2 instances myself, or configuring clusters, or even scaling up and down manually, I can just hand my containerized applications to Fargate, and it handles the heavy lifting pretty

Kelly 1:15
much. It's an abstraction layer. You just tell Fargate what your application needs, like CPU, memory, networking, package it up in a container image, yep. Then you just tell Fargate to run it, and from there, it handles the rest provisioning resources, scaling your application, availability, security, you name it,

Chris 1:32
so no more late night scrambling to provision more servers during a sudden traffic spike. No

Kelly 1:38
sir. Not with Fargate. That's one of its biggest selling points. Can you imagine building a web app that experiences, you know, really unpredictable traffic? Oh

Chris 1:47
yeah, that's pretty common. You have to provision for the worst case scenario,

Kelly 1:50
exactly. And that can get expensive fast. With Fargate, you don't have to over provision. It just scales up with your traffic and then scales back down when things quiet down again. That's

Chris 1:59
amazing resource utilization and cost, two birds, one stone. What other use cases really stand out to you? Where do you see Fargate making a big difference? Well,

Kelly 2:08
batch processing is a huge one. Think about data analysis, you know, machine learning, model training, anything computationally intensive,

Chris 2:16
ah, so spin up a cluster of containers, run those jobs, and then as soon as it's done, poof. The resources disappear exactly,

Kelly 2:23
and you only pay for the actual compute time used, no more idle servers burning a hole in your pocket. And it's not just limited to web apps and batch processing. Oh, really, yeah, I'm curious, what else would you use it for microservices? It's a perfect fit. Break down your application into smaller, independent services, each running in its own container. Fargate makes it easy to deploy, scale and manage all these individual services on their

Chris 2:47
own. That sounds incredibly powerful, increased flexibility, resilience, okay, I'm starting to get sense to the breadth and power of Fargate here. Let's dive even deeper, shall we? Yeah, what are some of the key features and benefits that really make it tick?

Kelly 3:00
Well, we touched on cost optimization already, and that's a big one. You really only pay for what you

Chris 3:05
use. And how does Fargate achieve that? Is it based on resource usage execution time, or is there some magic formula they're not telling us about?

Kelly 3:15
No magic, I promise. It's actually a combination of factors. So you're charged based on the amount of VCPU and memory resources your container asks for, and then the duration they actually run for, that's

Chris 3:25
incredibly efficient. But what about security? I mean handing over control of the underlying infrastructure to AWS that might raise some eyebrows. How does Fargate address those concerns? Security

Kelly 3:36
is definitely top of mind with Fargate, your containers run in a secure, isolated environment, leveraging all of AWS security features, plus you still have that granular control over who can access what, using things like IAM roles, security groups, VPCs.

Chris 3:51
So even though I'm not managing the servers directly, I still have the tools I need to make sure things are locked down tight.

Kelly 3:56
You got it. Fargate plays nicely with all the existing security stuff within AWS. Now

Chris 4:00
that's what I like to hear. So this all sounds great, powerful, flexible, but are there any limitations, any situations where Fargate might not be the best choice?

Kelly 4:09
Well, you're right. No service is perfect for every single scenario, while Fargate really shines for scalability, rapid deployment, you know, cost efficiency, right? Those are some of its big strengths. If you have applications that require very specific hardware, maybe unusual configurations, or they have really demanding persistent storage needs that aren't really a good fit for containers, you might want to consider other options that

Chris 4:34
makes sense. It's always about choosing the right tool for the job, right so where does Fargate fit into the broader AWS ecosystem. Does it work well with other AWS services? Oh,

Kelly 4:47
absolutely. Fargate is tightly integrated with a bunch of other AWS services. It creates this really comprehensive container management ecosystem. Okay, I like where this is going. Like we mentioned before, it's seamless with Amazon ECS. You know? Provides container orchestration capabilities and EKS for managing those Kubernetes clusters. So

Chris 5:05
I can use Fargate as the underlying Compute Engine, whether I'm working with ECS or EKS, exactly.

Kelly 5:11
And it goes even deeper than that. It integrates with ECR, the elastic container registry for storing those container images and other services too. IAM for access control, CloudWatch for monitoring and logging, even CloudTrail for auditing. It

Chris 5:25
sounds like Fargate is really a core part of the whole container world within AWS.

Kelly 5:31
It is, and as we move into the next phase of our deep dive, we'll see how all of this plays out in real world scenarios, especially those you might run into on an AWS certification exam. Speaking

Chris 5:41
of exams, I'm sure our listeners are dying to know how Fargate questions might pop up. Yeah, what are some of the key concepts and questions they should be prepared for? Get

Kelly 5:49
ready. We're heading into the exam prep zone. We'll dissect those common Fargate questions, explore strategies for answering them, and uncover some of the nuances that can really trip people up. All right, so let's say you are building a web app on Fargate, and it needs to connect to a database, hard coding those database credentials. Oh, yeah, that's a big no no. Right into your code is a big security risk. How would you approach this?

Unknown Speaker 6:12
That is a great

Chris 6:13
question. I've definitely heard that you're not supposed to hard code credentials, yeah, but I'm not really sure what the best practices are for handling that securely, especially in a Fargate environment, yeah,

Kelly 6:24
for sure. So the recommended approach is to use AWS secrets manager. Have you used that before?

Chris 6:29
I've heard of it. I know it's for storing sensitive information, but I haven't really had a chance to dive in. Yeah. It's

Kelly 6:35
specifically designed for that kind of stuff, like database credentials, API keys, anything you want to keep confidential. Okay,

Chris 6:41
that makes sense. So instead of embedding them right in my code, I store them in secrets manager. But then how does my application actually access them? I mean, it's running on Fargate. How do I make that connection without compromising security? Good question. So

Kelly 6:55
that's where IAM. Roles come into play.

Chris 6:58
I am roles, permissions and all that exactly,

Kelly 7:00
you grant your Fargate task permission to access the secrets it needs using IAM roles,

Chris 7:06
so the task assumes a role, yep, that

Kelly 7:09
has the permissions to read those secrets from Secrets manager got

Chris 7:12
it that way. The credentials are never actually exposed in my code or config files, exactly.

Kelly 7:17
And to make things even better secrets manager can rotate your credentials automatically at regular intervals, you know, just for that extra layer of security.

Chris 7:27
Oh, wow. So it reduces the risk of compromised credentials even further. Yeah, that's a really elegant solution. It is. So

Kelly 7:33
speaking of security, let's talk about security groups. They're like a virtual firewall. Oh,

Chris 7:37
yeah, security groups for controlling traffic, right, inbound and outbound, yep. And

Kelly 7:41
in a Fargate environment, each task gets assigned a network interface, and then you attach those security groups to those interfaces, okay?

Chris 7:48
And we define rules in the security groups to allow or deny traffic based on IP addresses, ports, protocols, all that good stuff

Kelly 7:55
you got it. Can you give me a specific example for how you might configure a security group for a Fargate task. Okay,

Chris 8:02
let's say I have a web application running on Fargate and it should only be accessible on port 80 for HTTP traffic. How would I set up a security group for that

Kelly 8:12
perfect example? So you would create a security group and then add an inbound role that specifically allows traffic on port 80 HTTP, and you can make it even more specific by only allowing traffic from certain IP addresses or ranges like

Chris 8:25
my company's network or a load balancer, for example, exactly

Kelly 8:28
so that only authorized sources can actually reach your web application. Okay, starting

Chris 8:33
to get the hang of it. So we use IAM roles for controlling access to AWS services and secrets. We use security groups to manage traffic at the network level. What about controlling access at the container level itself? So

Kelly 8:46
for that, you've got im roles for task, for tasks, yeah, you can assign an IAM role to a specific Fargate task, and that will grant it permissions to access AWS resources,

Chris 8:57
okay, so like, if my application needs to read data from an S3 bucket, I'd attach a role to the task that gives it red access to that bucket.

Kelly 9:04
Exactly. It's like having these multiple layers of security working together, right?

Chris 9:09
So IAM roles for controlling access to services and secret security group for that network traffic control, and then IAM roles for tasks to define what each container can actually do, like a defense in depth approach.

Kelly 9:21
That's it. It's all about making sure your Fargate environment is as secure as possible.

Chris 9:26
This is great. I'm feeling much more confident about the security side of things now, yeah, what other Fargate concepts should we be ready for in those exam questions? What else comes up a lot?

Kelly 9:36
Well, one thing they often ask about is Fargates integration with ECS. ECS the elastic container service, right? Remember, ECS is really powerful for orchestrating and managing your containers, and Fargate provides that serverless Compute Engine to run those containers.

Chris 9:52
So it's like ECS is the conductor, and then Fargate is the orchestra playing the beautiful music of our applications. I

Kelly 9:58
like that, and one thing they might. Ask about is the different launch types that are available in ECS launch types? Yeah. So there's the EC2 launch type and the Fargate launch type, right? I remember

Chris 10:08
hearing about those. I'm ready to take notes. What are the main differences between them? Okay,

Kelly 10:13
so with the EC2 launch type, you're essentially managing the underlying EC2 instances yourself. So you're picking the instance types, configuring the operating system, managing the networking.

Chris 10:25
Sounds like the more hands on DIY approach? Exactly. You

Kelly 10:29
have a lot of control, but more responsibility too. Yep. Now with the Fargate launch type, that's where you embrace serverless. Okay? So no more server management, no Fargate handles all of that. You don't have to worry about servers or clusters at all. You just focus on your applications. It's like the difference

Chris 10:44
between building your own house from scratch versus moving into a fully furnished apartment. Sometimes you just want that hassle free apartment living right, exactly.

Kelly 10:52
And the exams might ask you about situations where one launch type would be more suitable than the other. They want to see if you understand the trade offs got it. So

Chris 11:00
choosing the right launch type depends on my specific needs and how much control I want to

Kelly 11:06
have. Yep, what else? Oh, they also focus a lot on task definitions and ECS. Task definitions remind me what those are. Again, think of it like a blueprint that describes how your containers should run. It's a JSON file where you specify all the details, like which container image to use how much CPU and memory it needs, the ports to expose any environment variables or secrets to inject.

Chris 11:26
Ah, okay, so it's like a recipe for baking up our containerized applications. I always appreciate a good recipe,

Kelly 11:32
perfect analogy, and one common scenario they might present is how to update a task definition.

Chris 11:38
Okay, yeah, like if I've updated my application code and need to deploy a new version of my container image. How do I update that task definition and get that new image running?

Kelly 11:46
Exactly? So what would you do in that situation? Hmm, well,

Chris 11:50
I would probably create a new revision of my task definition with the updated container image and any other changes I made, right? And then I'd update my ECS service to point to that new revision you

Kelly 11:59
got it, and ECS will then gracefully deploy the updated tasks with minimal downtime for your application. That's great.

Chris 12:05
And I remember hearing about rolling updates too. Are those important for ECS and Fargate? Yeah, they

Kelly 12:10
are. Rolling updates are a way to maintain availability during deployments, and ECS has built in mechanisms for doing those so it gradually

Chris 12:16
replaces instances of the old task definition with the new one, exactly. And

Kelly 12:20
you can even configure different deployment strategies. Deployment strategies. Okay, so

Chris 12:23
ECS and Fargate are working together to make these deployments smooth and painless, that's the goal. But what about Kubernetes? I know a lot of people are using EKS, the Elastic Kubernetes Service, for their container orchestration. What's the story there with Fargate? Oh,

Kelly 12:40
yeah. Kubernetes is huge these days, and the great news is that Fargate can also be the Compute Engine for your EKS clusters. Wait,

Chris 12:47
really. So instead of running my Kubernetes pods on EC2 instances, I can run them on Fargate and get all those serverless benefits.

Kelly 12:54
You got it. It's called Fargate spot for EKS. Fargate spot for EKS, yeah, and it's super cost effective. You just define your pods and deployments like you normally would with Kubernetes, but instead of specifying those EC2 instances, you just configure them to run on Fargate.

Chris 13:09
So whether I'm using ECS or EKS, I can leverage Fargate as my Compute Engine. It really is super versatile. It is,

Kelly 13:16
and in an exam, you might get asked about how to configure your Kubernetes deployment YAML files to use Fargate.

Chris 13:21
Ah, YAML files the language of Kubernetes,

Kelly 13:25
right? So in those files, you would specify Fargate as the launch type, and

Chris 13:30
then Kubernetes would handle scheduling my pods on those Fargate resources Exactly.

Kelly 13:35
And one important thing to remember is that when you're running on Fargate, your pods still have access to all those security features, like IAM roles and security groups, so

Chris 13:45
it's that same consistent security model across ECS and EKS. I like that. It makes things easier to manage.

Kelly 13:52
Right? Security is key no matter which orchestration platform you're using. Now, let's switch gears a bit and talk about Fargates pricing, model.

Chris 13:59
Pricing, always a fun topic. I'm all ears. Break it down for me. All

Kelly 14:02
right, so with Fargate, you pay for the amount of VCPU and memory that your tasks request and the duration those tasks actually run for. So no paying for idle servers, Nope, just what you use, which is great compared to managing your own servers. It is, what are the different pricing options? Well, it depends on what you're doing and whether you're using ECS or EKS. But for ECS, you have the option of using Fargate spot, Fargate spot with that. So with Fargate spot, your tasks run on spare EC2 capacity that AWS has. Ah, so

Speaker 1 14:30
it's like getting a discounted rate because I'm using resources that would otherwise be sitting idle. Exactly.

Kelly 14:35
It's much cheaper than regular Fargate pricing. But there is a trade off.

Chris 14:40
Okay, there's gotta be a catch. What is it?

Kelly 14:44
Spot Instances can be interrupted with a two minute notice.

Chris 14:47
Oh, so if AWS needs that capacity back, my tasks could get shut down.

Kelly 14:52
Yeah, it's like getting a great deal on a flight or a hotel room, but there's a chance you might get bumped if someone's willing to pay full price.

Chris 14:59
Makes sense. So. Fargate spot is good for things that can handle interruptions, like batch processing jobs, right

Kelly 15:05
or certain types of scientific computations, but for things that need to be up and running all the time, you might want to stick with regular Fargate pricing. Got

Chris 15:12
it so it's all about weighing the cost savings of spot against the potential for interruptions. What about EKS? Does they have a spot option too?

Kelly 15:20
It does far date spot for EKS works in a similar way. You can configure your Kubernetes deployments to use that spot capacity and save a bunch of money. Wow.

Chris 15:27
This is really helpful. Knowing all these pricing details is super important for making good decisions and keeping those costs down.

Kelly 15:34
It is and you know what? Speaking of optimizing costs and choosing the right configuration, there are so many different knobs and levers you can tweak.

Chris 15:42
Ah, the joys of configuration. Always so many options, right?

Kelly 15:46
But it's important to understand how those configurations impact your application's performance and, of course, your costs Absolutely.

Chris 15:53
So what are some of the key things we should be thinking about when we're configuring Fargate?

Kelly 15:59
Well, one thing that comes to mind is CPU and memory allocation.

Chris 16:03
Okay, so how much horsepower and brain power we're giving our containers exactly?

Kelly 16:07
You want to make sure you're requesting enough resources for your application to run smoothly,

Chris 16:11
right? But not too much, or we end up overspending Exactly.

Kelly 16:15
It's all about finding that sweet spot. So it's good to monitor your application's performance and adjust those resource allocations as needed. So start

Chris 16:23
with a baseline configuration. Keep an eye on how things are running, and then tweak as we go

Kelly 16:28
exactly. And don't forget about networking.

Chris 16:31
Ah, networking the lifeblood of any application, right?

Kelly 16:35
You want to make sure your Fargate tasks have the right network access and connectivity,

Chris 16:40
so things like VPCs, subnets, security groups all come into play here. Yep,

Kelly 16:44
you can control which VPC your tasks run in, which subnets they're connected to, and

Chris 16:49
all that good stuff. And that ties back into the security conversations we were having earlier. Absolutely, it's

Kelly 16:54
all connected. And then there are other things to consider, like logging and monitoring. Observability.

Chris 17:00
Got to make sure we can see what's happening with our applications Exactly.

Kelly 17:04
So Fargate integrates seamlessly with CloudWatch, so you can collect logs, monitor metrics, set up alarms, all the usual stuff. It

Chris 17:12
sounds like Fargate really provides all the tools we need to run our containerized applications effectively, and it plays so well with other AWS services. It's like it fits right into that broader ecosystem without any hiccups. It does, and that's

Kelly 17:25
what makes it so powerful. You're not limited to just Fargate itself. You can leverage all the other AWS services to build really sophisticated and resilient applications.

Chris 17:35
This has been an amazing, deep dive into AWS Fargate. I feel like I've learned so much. Any final words of wisdom for our listeners before we wrap things up,

Kelly 17:44
just remember, Fargate is an incredibly powerful tool. It can really simplify your container deployments and management, especially for cloud engineers. It takes away all that server management headache, exactly so embrace serverless, explore Fargate, experiment with it, and who knows, maybe you'll discover some amazing new use cases we haven't even talked about today. That's the beauty

Chris 18:06
of it. There's always something new to learn and explore in the cloud. Well, a huge thank you to our expert for sharing their knowledge and insights with us today. This has been an incredible journey, and to all our listeners out there, keep learning, keep exploring and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AWS until next time happy clouding.