Kubernetes vs. AWS—Key features, benefits, and pricing explained

Kubernetes helps you deploy, manage, and scale apps that run in containers—isolated packages of code. Amazon Web Services offers a product that serves the same purpose: AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS). Both solutions are great for scaling and streamlining the management and maintenance of cloud-native apps, but they come with different scopes and capabilities. So, you might be wondering which one comes out on top in the Kubernetes vs. AWS ECS showdown.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into both products, highlighting their key features and differences to help you choose the one that better meets your needs. We’ll also explore other AWS services that can perform some of Kubernetes' functions, such as Fargate and Lambda. 

Lastly, we’ll present Miro—an Innovation Workspace that makes it easy to visualize your AWS or Kubernetes setup, compare configurations side-by-side, and collaborate with your team in real time.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes (also called K8s because of the eight letters between K and S) is an open-source container orchestration platform originally designed by Google.

Let’s break down this definition to decipher what Kubernetes is all about:

• Open-source: The program is freely available to everyone, and users can inspect and modify its source code.

• Container: A container is a software unit that contains code and everything else an app needs to run in a particular environment. Containers don’t require virtual hardware or virtual operating system resources to run apps (unlike virtual machines), so they offer efficiency. Containerization also provides portability—since a container has everything an app needs to run, you can “take” your app to any environment without rebuilding it.

• Container orchestration: This involves automating the deployment and management of containerized apps.

Imagine you’re moving to a new house. Normally, you’d pack your belongings in separate boxes—clothing, kitchen stuff, appliances, and furniture. Now, suppose you had a huge container that could fit all your belongings. This way, you could efficiently move everything to your new home. That’s what containerized apps are about—they can quickly move to new environments without adjustments.

Think of Kubernetes as a container supervisor. It oversees containerized apps and handles their organization, deployment, and operation to make sure they run without delays or issues.

Important features you’ll get with Kubernetes

Kubernetes offers loads of useful options, but we’ll focus on three key ones:

Automated rollouts and rollbacks

When you make changes to an app, Kubernetes won’t apply them all at once but will introduce them slowly to prevent “shocking” the system. This is known as automatic rollout. Automated rollouts in Kubernetes offer the following benefits:

• No downtime: Your app is up and running while getting gradually updated.

• Safety: Kubernetes monitors your app’s health for you to make sure updates don’t cause issues.

What if there’s a malfunction, like a bug or a compatibility issue? No worries, because Kubernetes also offers automated rollbacks, which involve returning to a previous, “healthy” version of your app.

Self-healing

Kubernetes has self-healing superpowers by default to make sure your apps function perfectly without any intervention on your end. Here are a few examples of Kubernetes’ self-healing ability:

1. Restarting containers that fail

2. Replacing and rescheduling containers when nodes (machines that run containers) go down

3. Killing containers that don’t work as expected (you define expectations by setting up health checks and probes)

Through self-healing, Kubernetes contributes to:

• Easy problem detection: You don’t have to spend your days worrying about your apps and their health. The self-healing option in Kubernetes automatically detects issues and takes care of them without you lifting a finger.

• Reduced downtime: As Kubernetes can quickly identify and resolve problems, your app can keep functioning with minimal downtime or lags, and users can continue to enjoy it without hiccups.

Load balancing

When pods (groups of containers) in Kubernetes don’t handle the same amount of traffic, your app can experience performance issues. To prevent uneven incoming traffic distribution, Kubernetes offers a load balancer.

When traffic is equally distributed among pods, your app experiences less downtime. Plus, load balancing supports scalability—Kubernetes will automatically distribute traffic to new pods to prevent overwhelming the system and make sure everything runs smoothly even if there’s increased demand.

What is AWS ECS?

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ESC) is a fully managed container orchestration service developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS)—it lets you deploy, manage, and scale containerized apps. “Fully managed” means that AWS takes over infrastructure and resource management so you can launch containers at scale without worrying about underlying technical details.

All you need to do to use AWS ECS is to describe your app and the resources required. Based on your input, the service will launch, monitor, and scale your app across various compute options. These options offer automated integrations with other AWS services (like Amazon RDS databases or S3 storage options) that your app needs to work without issues and lags.

Important features you’ll get with AWS ECS

Here are some handy features you can access through AWS ECS:

Numerous compute options

Since ECS is part of the AWS ecosystem, you can take advantage of its various compute options to run your containers. Here are some examples:

Powerful built-in security features

ECS gives you access to AWS’ robust security and governance options to make sure your apps are protected and compliant with relevant requirements.

For example, you can configure granular permissions for each container separately to minimize risks of unauthorized access.

You can also take advantage of AWS GuardDuty to protect your data through continuous monitoring and intelligent threat detection.

Automated environment management

With Amazon ECS, you don’t have to worry about configuring and managing control planes (the central command centers that monitor and manage your system’s performance), nodes, or add-ons. Instead of building the environment, you can spend your valuable time on what really matters—building apps. 

AWS takes care of everything else for you, and it follows configuration and operational best practices by default to make sure your environment is secure and reliable.

AWS ECS vs. Kubernetes—Key differences to consider

If you can’t decide between AWS ECS and Kubernetes, here are some differences between the two solutions that might help you make the right choice:

Compatibility

Kubernetes is vendor-agnostic, which means it can run on any cloud provider, such as Google Cloud, Azure, and even AWS. The service can also run in different on-premise environments. Thanks to its exceptional compatibility with different systems, Kubernetes makes it easy to switch cloud providers or migrate from an on-premises environment to the cloud. So, Kubernetes is a viable option for those who want to avoid vendor lock-in.

Meanwhile, ECS is native to AWS and can run only on that cloud provider. This may be a limitation, but it doesn’t have to be a drawback, especially considering that AWS is the world’s most comprehensive cloud solution and offers more than 200 services. Chances are you’ll find everything you need within AWS.

Infrastructure management

Kubernetes puts you firmly in charge of infrastructure management. What this means is that you:

1. Manually configure VMs or servers

2. Manage clusters (groups of nodes)

3. Conduct updates and patches

4. Monitor operations

This freedom gives you the utmost flexibility to configure virtually all parts of the infrastructure and create a system that suits your needs to the letter. At the same time, it also imposes more responsibility.

On the other hand, Amazon ECS is fully managed, so AWS handles all the behind-the-scenes work to keep your containers running safely and reliably. You don’t have to worry about configuring servers or VMs or updating your infrastructure—you can enjoy simplicity and a more streamlined user experience. But, you’ll have limited customization options in terms of configurations. 

Complexity and learning curve

The level of freedom you get with Kubernetes to build and manage your infrastructure however you want is enticing. But it comes at a cost. You can’t successfully handle container orchestration if you have no idea how Kubernetes works and are not familiar with relevant technical jargon. The platform has a steep learning curve, so it’s definitely not a beginner-friendly tool.

Amazon ECS, on the other hand, is more suitable for beginners, especially because there’s no infrastructure management to worry about.

Pricing

Kubernetes is a free platform in itself, but you’ll need to pay for servers, storage, and potential third-party integrations you’ll use to manage containers.

Amazon ECS is also free, meaning there’s no additional charge to use this particular service within the AWS ecosystem. You pay for specific AWS resources you use to keep your apps up and running.

Amazon ECS has two charge models:

Kubernetes vs. other AWS services

Here’s a quick overview of how other AWS services like Fargate, Lambda, and EC2 compare to Kubernetes and when they may be a more suitable alternative:

• AWS Fargate vs. Kubernetes: Fargate is serverless, so it’s a better option if you prefer that type of architecture and don’t want to deal with managing your servers.

• AWS Lambda vs. Kubernetes: Lambda is also serverless, so it’s more suitable if you don’t want to manage the infrastructure. It’s also an excellent choice if you’re handling event-driven workloads or want rapid deployment.

• AWS EC2 vs. Kubernetes: EC2 can be a good alternative to Kubernetes if you have specific hardware requirements and want to customize the underlying compute environment yourself.

A potential alternative to Amazon ECS—Amazon EKS

AWS ECS is an excellent option if you want to handle containerized apps but aren’t familiar with the technical lingo of Kubernetes and prefer not to deal with the complexity of managing container orchestration yourself.

But, with ECS, you may miss out on benefits like high flexibility, rich customization, and all-around compatibility you’d get with Kubernetes. What if we told you you can get the best of both worlds?

AWS has a unique service called Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) that lets you run Kubernetes on AWS and on-premises. Amazon EKS runs upstream Kubernetes and is a certified Kubernetes-conformant, which means that:

1. Existing apps running on upstream Kubernetes are compatible with EKS

2. You can use all existing plug-ins and tooling from the Kubernetes community on EKS

With Amazon EKS, AWS still handles the heavy lifting, like setting up and managing the Kubernetes control plane. So, instead of dealing with technical stuff, you can devote your time to maximizing the flexibility Kubernetes offers.

Customer stories

One of the best ways to understand how you can benefit from Amazon ECS or Kubernetes is to check out real-life customer experiences.

Adidas & Kubernetes

Adidas, a popular athletic apparel and footwear manufacturer, was happy with its software from a technology standpoint but had trouble accessing the tools. For instance, to get a developer VM, they had to jump through various hoops and spend valuable time. The best-case scenario was getting the machine in half an hour, but sometimes, they had to wait up to a week.

So, Adidas found a solution that involved Kubernetes and Prometheus (a monitoring and alerting service). Only six months after implementing the solution, the company was able to achieve the following results:

• 100% of Adidas’ ecommerce website was running on Kubernetes

• Load time was cut in half

• Releases went from every four to six weeks to three or four times per day

Flywire & Amazon ECS

Flywire, an international payment processing solution, was expanding rapidly and wanted to reinvent its cloud architecture with a focus on scalability and compute cost optimization.

So the company decided to migrate to AWS. 

After the initial migration, Flywire wanted to give its engineers more space to focus on valuable tasks that directly support the business, so it moved its workloads to Amazon ECS. To further boost productivity, it ran Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate.

The results were impressive. The company managed to:

• Reduce compute costs by 70%

• Save 40% of its teams’ time usually spent on manual security patches

In addition to Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate, Flywire took advantage of other AWS services, such as Amazon GuardDuty, to protect its accounts through intelligent threat detection.

Map out your cloud architecture with Miro

If you’re looking to take full advantage of everything AWS has to offer, Amazon ECS is the way to go when it comes to managing containerized apps. While Amazon ECS is super powerful, it’s only a small piece of the puzzle—AWS offers dozens of services you can combine with Amazon ECS to build and maintain a reliable cloud architecture. You can even work directly in Kubernetes with AWS’ Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

But, an AWS cloud architecture can be quite complex, and to fully optimize it, you need to visualize all relevant components and understand how they interact with each other. Only then you’ll be able to plan with confidence, identify bottlenecks, and properly allocate resources.

A tool like Miro can help you visually represent every part of your architecture. It’s an Innovation Workspace with state-of-the-art diagramming options that boost team collaboration and help you paint a clear picture of your cloud setup.

Here are some of the top-tier architecture diagramming options you’ll get with Miro:

• AWS Cloud View app: A handy tool that lets you generate AWS infrastructure diagrams by importing data directly from your AWS account. Use it to visualize your resources and right-size them according to your needs.

• AWS shape pack: Take advantage of an extensive library of standardized AWS shapes to bring your AWS cloud architecture components to life. Visualize and optimize your cloud setup by simply dragging and dropping the desired shapes across your Miro board.

• 26+ cloud architecture diagramming templates: You’ll especially love the AWS Architecture Diagramming Template which lets you plan, design, and audit your cloud architecture effortlessly. There’s even a dedicated Kubernetes Architecture Diagramming template to easily manage the deployment of containerized apps.

• Diagram Focus Mode: Customize your diagrams to fit your project and workload needs with handy tools like curated toolbars, layers, and easy alignment and distribution updates.

• AWS Cost Calculator: Get a clear estimate of your cloud architecture costs and spot cost-optimization opportunities right on your Miro board.

• Real-time and async collaboration: Work with your team on designing your AWS cloud architecture using interactive presentations, live workshops, and async Talktracks.

• Security and compliance: Keep your AWS setup secure with features like user access control and normalized audit logs.

If you’d like to explore Miro in detail and try out its AWS features, sign up for a free Business trial.

To get a better idea of how Miro can help in a real-world scenario, check out the stories of some of its many happy customers. One of them is ClickHouse—the database management company successfully streamlined feature development and simplified collaboration with Miro’s assistance.

If you’d like to migrate to the AWS cloud, we recommend checking out our cloud migration webinar and whitepaper. These valuable resources will help you overcome common challenges related to migrations, such as inefficiencies and potential security risks.