Amazon ECS
Deploy the Camunda 8 Orchestration Cluster and Connectors to Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to benefit from containerization without having to manage Kubernetes infrastructure.
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Get started with Amazon ECS and Fargate:
Deploy the Orchestration Cluster to Amazon ECS
Learn the fundamentals
This deployment targets a single AWS Region with multiple Availability Zones, running the Orchestration Cluster and Connectors on Amazon ECS with Fargate.
Other dependencies include:
- Amazon EFS as primary storage
- Aurora PostgreSQL as secondary storage
- Amazon S3 for node ID metadata and backups
For more implementation details, read the Architecture section of our deployment guide.
Dynamic node ID provider
Camunda 8 is designed for Kubernetes StatefulSet deployments where each broker manages data on dedicated disk storage. Amazon ECS presents a challenge, as tasks are stateless by design and typically rely on external databases for state management.
To deploy Camunda 8 to Amazon ECS, we introduce a dynamic node ID provider service backed by Amazon S3. This service enables each ECS task to assume the role of a Camunda 8 broker and safely manage the corresponding data in a dedicated directory on a shared EFS disk.
The node ID provider operates using a lease mechanism stored in Amazon S3. A task acquires a broker role when it obtains the lease for a specific node ID. If the lease cannot be renewed, the task shuts down immediately to maintain data integrity.
Amazon ECS vs. Amazon EKS
If you're already invested in Kubernetes tooling and patterns and you want to remain in that environment, Amazon EKS might be a better option for you. More reasons to consider deploying to Amazon EKS over Amazon ECS include:
- Multi-region support: When deploying to Amazon ECS, the only supported and tested pattern is a single AWS Region with multiple Availability Zones (multi‑AZ). All core pieces of the Orchestration Cluster are expected to live in one region.
- Performance: The Amazon ECS with Fargate deployment uses Amazon EFS as primary storage. This may result in higher costs and lower performance than a Kubernetes setup with block storage.
- Scaling: The autoscaling feature of ECS is not currently supported.
Check out our Amazon EKS deployment guide if a Kubernetes environment better suits your needs.
