What's the difference between Docker running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2 and ECS running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2 platforms when using Elastic Beanstalk?

Question

I want to deploy a multicontainer Docker app using AWS Elastic Beanstalk. I see both Docker running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2 and ECS running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2 platform branches support it. By using any of them, each one of the EC2 instances will have the same containers running inside.

So what's the difference between Docker and ECS platforms?

Answer 1

The Docker option simply runs docker run commands to start a container (or docker-compose up to start multiple containers) on each EC2 instance.

The ECS option uses the much more advanced ECS service to orchestrate and monitor the containers on each EC2 instance, and opens up the possibility of using other ECS features, such as service discovery.