AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) - Deep Dive

Name: AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) - Deep Dive
Rating: 4.1 (1100 reviews)

ECS from Basic to Advanced (Includes basic Docker)

Created bySoumyadeep Dey

Last updated 4/2025

English

What you'll learn

Basic knowledge of what containers are and how it works
Basic hands-on and conceptual understanding of Docker
In-depth knowledge on Amazon ECS
Application deployment on AWS ECS
ECS integration with development tools like CodeCommit, CodePipeline etc (high level)

Course content

11 sections • 71 lectures • 12h 2m total length

2025 ECS Updates - Recap & New Feature Launches16:12
Explore 2025 updates to AWS ecs, including app runner, copilot, and ecs anywhere, with focus on running containers on premises or across clouds via external launch type and self-managed compute.
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) ECS Cluster & EC2 Launch Type22:38
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) Cluster CloudFormation Stack4:26
3. 2025 ECS Updates - Task Definition Components10:19
Understand aws ecs task definitions, including launch types, container definitions, port mappings, roles, and logging. Explore new features like efs file system, fsx, fault injection, root file access, and Prometheus.
4. 2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) Task Definition Pre-requisites21:07
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) Create Task Definition18:26
2025 ECS Updates - ECS Service8:50
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) Deploy Task using ECS Service33:32
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) News Feed Application - Requirement & Pre-requisites28:40
2025 ECS - (Lab) News Feed Application - ReportNews & AddNewsArticles API Codes23:40
2025 ECS - (Lab) News Feed Application - ReadNews & ReadNewsArticles API Codes19:29
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) News Feed Application - BreakingNews API Code7:21
Explore 2025 ECS updates by building a breaking news feed using the breaking news API with an in-memory ElastiCache Redis on EC2, and compare latency against DynamoDB.
2025 ECS Updates - (Lab) Deploy & Host News Feed Application on AWS ECS21:35
Deploy a news feed app on AWS ECS using EC2, Docker images, and ECR; define tasks and services for breaking, read, and report news with DynamoDB and Redis.

What are Containers, Evolution of container technologies13:47
Application Evolution - Container Realization10:03
Docker Container Concepts5:27
Docker Working Architecture (for the lab)2:43
(Lab) Setup Docker Hub, Docker Daemon & Client13:17
Introduction to Dockerfile7:10
(Lab) Dockerfile intial Demo14:12
Create a dockerfile for a basic python flask app, build a docker image, and run a container on port 8080.

(Lab) "docker build" command & Docker Hub5:19
(Lab) Building images - "docker image" command15:18
(Lab) Manage containers - "docker container" command11:39
(Lab) Docker networking - "docker network" command7:02
(Lab) Create & Run containers - "docker container run" command3:09
Learn to run containers with docker container run, using attach or detach modes, pass environment variables, name containers, configure networks and drivers, publish ports, and explore volumes.
(Lab) Docker volumes, Bind Mounts16:47
Docker Assignment

ECS Architecture & Workflow10:54
ECS Hierarchy and ECR3:49
Explore the ECS hierarchy from cluster to containers, and examine how tasks, task definitions, and services coordinate workloads, plus AWS ECR's private registry with authentication tokens.
(Lab) ECR11:09
Create and manage private ECR repositories, login with AWS CLI, tag and push Docker images, and pull them from ECR to deploy in ECS.
ECS Cluster Concepts4:33
(Lab) ECS Cluster11:05
Task Definition (TDef) Concepts4:44
TDef Component 1 - Networking Mode13:02
TDef Component 2 - Container Definition12:25
TDef Component 3 - Volumes6:56
(Lab) Create a complete Task Defition8:51
(Lab) Bridge Networking Mode TDef Component15:48
(Lab) Host Networking Mode TDef Component6:13
(Lab) AWSVPC Networking Mode TDef Component6:49
(Lab) Volumes TDef Component8:39
Task Definition Summary1:27
Case Study testing using Task Definition & Run Task11:37

Service Registry & Discovery15:57
Learn how service registry and discovery enable microservices to communicate and scale independently within ECS clusters, using Elastic Load Balancer and Route 53 for automatic service registration and discovery.
AWS ECS Service Concepts9:43
(Lab) VPC Network Topology for ECS Cluster3:43
Explore the working VPC topology for an ECS cluster, with one public subnet and two private subnets, internet gateway, route tables, and security groups guiding EC2 launch and lab setup.
(Lab) Extending VPC N/W2:55
(Lab) Create Classic and Application Load Balancers2:25
Service Load Balancer and ASG4:13
Explore how the ECS service load balancer distributes traffic across tasks with dynamic port mapping, using task definitions and service auto scaling to achieve scalable deployments.
(Lab) ECS Services - Part 118:32
(Lab) ECS Services - Part 28:58
ECS Auto Scaling Concepts3:44
Explore cluster auto scaling and service auto scaling in ecs, showing how clusters add instances and services scale containers to meet increasing load.
(Lab) Cluster Auto Scaling Configuration8:00
Show how a CloudFormation stack creates an ECS cluster, launch configuration, and auto scaling group, then enables dynamic scaling with CloudWatch alarms for CPU utilization.
(Lab) Service Auto Scaling Configuration5:44
Hints & Tips7:49
Explore practical tips for AWS ECS, covering ECR, clusters, task definitions, container IAM roles, VPC networking, logging, load balancing, and auto-scaling best practices.

Step 1 - Understand the code (OPTIONAL)6:46
Step 2 & 3 - ECR and VPC4:40
Step 4 - Create ALB and Change code accordingly8:07
Step 5 & 6 - Create RDS & ECS cluster4:00
Create an RDS database via a managed service and connect from the app; then configure an EC2-based ECS cluster in a non-default VPC with private subnets and a NAT gateway.
Step 7 & 8 - Create Task Definition and Service9:04
Step 9 - Test the Application2:24
A bit more on the Networking Modes (Important)8:23

Requirements

Basic understanding of AWS
Should have working knowledge using AWS management console

Description

Amazon Elastic Container Service is the Native Container Orchestrator provided by AWS. In this course you will learn about ECS from basic to advanced mode.

It starts with Container concepts with Docker, Docker Labs and then into ECS. It shows how ECS can be helpful in managing environments with multiple containers.

It will also show ECS integration with development tools like CodeCommit, CodePipeline (on a high level).

I will add EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) in due time.

Who this course is for:

Who wants to work on a container orchestrator tool in AWS
Who needs a cloud native exposure on application hosting using containers
Wants to know Containerization Technologies (Docker)
Who wants to deploy applications, as microservices, onto containers

AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) - Deep Dive

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

[NEW / UPDATE 2025] AWS ECS 202513 lectures • 3hr 56min

Container/Docker Basics7 lectures • 1hr 7min

Basic Docker Commands6 lectures • 59min

Case Study (Host a 2-tier application using Docker containers)4 lectures • 32min

AWS ECS - ECS Cluster & Task Definition16 lectures • 2hr 18min

AWS ECS - Services & Discovery12 lectures • 1hr 32min

Deploy Case Study Application Step-by-Step7 lectures • 43min

AWS ECS - Monitoring & Logging2 lectures • 15min

AWS ECS Fargate1 lecture • 8min

ECS with AWS DevOps (CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline)2 lectures • 24min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: