terraform-aws-ecs-web-app VS Docker Compose

I’ve been spending a week trying to learn how to deploy a collection of containers (my web app, a Postgres DB, and some microservices) to AWS and I am still so lost.

The first solution I happened upon was serverless. Specifically SST, which is written with AWS CDK, but you must develop on live services and I just can’t justify paying to develop.

Then I found Serverless Framework, which is an abstraction on CloudFormation, but the offline solutions like localstack get a lot of flack for being buggy and localstack charges for some services. I also looked into Architect but the documentation is abysmal.

Then I figured serverful might be the easier way to go. I found that docker compose has a built in integration with AWS ECS where it transforms your yaml into Cloudformation to provision the right services. However, it seems to just be missing key parts like custom domain and SSL certificate provisioning which seems to defeat the IaC ethos.

Then I figured I might go with Terraform and I found some seemingly good starters like https://github.com/aws-ia/terraform-aws-ecs-blueprints https://github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-ecs-web-app https://github.com/turnerlabs/terraform-ecs-fargate but the examples are just lacking. They don’t have any examples for multiple containers that can access each others’ resources that I can find. Reading these templates has at least given me a better idea of the resources I need to provision in AWS but the networking and configuration still frighten me. Like do I need to configure nginx with a reverse proxy myself? How do I orchestrate that container with the others? And apparently services can crash and just not restart? And I need to make sure to configure volumes for data that needs to persist. And setting up the CI/CD seems daunting.

I’ve also heard about docker swarm, kubernetes, pulumi, AWS SAM, etc but it’s a lot to learn. When I go on Discords for web frameworks, mostly everyone including the devs of these frameworks use 2nd tier managed providers like Vercel, Fly, Netlify, Supabase, Cloudflare, etc. But many of those are just not as reliable as core cloud providers and the cost is way higher. Glad to see I’m not alone in a very reasonable expectation of a simple way to orchestrate multiple containers on AWS, what must be the most common use case web developers have

As an aside, this is the first time I've heard about Flightcontrol. Super impressed! The biggest con of something like Vercel is that you can't be on your own AWS VPC. An RDS instance with a public IP address (which Vercel's docs endorse) is a dealbreaker for me.

But... wouldn't a Terraform module accomplish something simmilar? Our own stack is something like Codepipeline + Fargate + ALB + Cloudwatch + Cloudfront and we basically just forked https://github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-ecs-web-app

Solutions are many, and could include Docker Compose, VS Code dev containers, Telepresence, Localstack or setting up temporary AWS accounts as a development environment for serverless applications.

Using Docker Compose to run Postgres and any third-party services locally provides a streamlined and consistent development environment. Developers can define services in a docker-compose.yml file, which enables them to configure and launch an entire stack with a single command. In this case, Postgres is encapsulated within a container with predefined configurations. Docker Compose also facilitates easy scaling, updates, and isolation of services, enhancing development efficiency and reducing the setup time for new team members or transitioning between projects. It encapsulates complex configurations, such as Postgres' performance monitoring and logging settings, in a manageable, version-controlled file, simplifying and replicating the service setup across different environments.

“Compose simplifies the control of your entire application stack, making it easy to manage services, networks, and volumes in a single, comprehensible YAML configuration file. Then, with a single command, you create and start all the services from your configuration file.” - Docker documentation

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh sudo sh get-docker.sh # Install docker compose sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose # Apply executable permissions to the binary sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose # Run Project docker-compose up -d

Docker,

This foundation now opens the door to even more powerful concepts. You can explore more advanced concepts such as container networking, streamlining the management of complex applications with Docker Compose, and how to make your application data persistent using volumes.

In many projects that are containerized, especially in cases where development is also done locally with docker-compose, teams often have two Dockerfiles, 1 for Development, the other for Production. If you happen to have multiple environments like pre-prod, staging and so on, some teams could have different Dockerfiles for these environments.

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose