AWS Fargate

Container orchestration in the cloud

What is containerization?

Containerization is a method of virtualization that allows you to run an application and its dependencies in resource-isolated processes (containers).

What is AWS Fargate?

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers.

Benefits of AWS Fargate (2025)

Operational Benefits

  • Zero server management - no EC2 provisioning, patching, or scaling
  • Automatic scaling - scale to zero or thousands of containers
  • Security isolation - task-level isolation with dedicated compute environment
  • Fast startup times - containers launch in seconds

Cost Optimization

  • Per-second billing with granular resource allocation
  • Fargate Spot - up to 70% cost reduction for fault-tolerant workloads
  • Savings Plans - up to 50% discount with usage commitments
  • Right-sizing - precise CPU/memory allocation without over-provisioning

Service Integrations (2025)

  • ECS and EKS - primary orchestration platforms
  • CloudWatch Container Insights - enhanced monitoring and logging
  • AWS App Mesh - service mesh integration for microservices
  • Amazon EBS - persistent storage for stateful applications
  • AWS X-Ray - distributed tracing and performance monitoring

AWS Fargate Features (2025)

Core Capabilities

  • Serverless compute for containers (no EC2 management)
  • ECS and EKS integration for orchestration
  • Per-second billing with 1-minute minimum
  • Auto-scaling based on metrics and schedules

2024-2025 New Features

  • EBS volume support (January 2024) - persistent storage
  • Fargate Spot - up to 70% cost savings for fault-tolerant workloads
  • ARM Graviton2 - cost-optimized ARM processing
  • Windows containers - full Windows containerization support

Technical Specifications

  • CPU: 0.25-16 vCPU (Intel x86, ARM Graviton2)
  • Memory: 512 MB - 120 GB RAM
  • Storage: 20 GB ephemeral + optional EBS volumes
  • Platform versions: Linux 1.4.0, Windows 1.0.0

Basic concepts

  • Container: A standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies
  • Image: A read-only template used to create a container
  • Task: An instantiation of a container or group of containers
  • Task Definition: A blueprint for a task that includes all the container definitions
  • Cluster: A logical grouping of tasks and services
  • Service: A logical grouping of tasks that provides a way to scale and manage them

Modern Use Cases (2025)

Web Applications & APIs

  • Microservices architectures with auto-scaling
  • API gateways and backend services
  • Serverless web applications with event-driven scaling

Data Processing & Analytics

  • ETL pipelines with EBS persistent storage
  • Real-time stream processing with Kinesis integration
  • Data lake processing with S3 and Athena integration

AI/ML Workloads

  • ML model inference with auto-scaling endpoints
  • Training jobs using Fargate Spot for cost optimization
  • Computer vision pipelines with GPU-optimized instances

Enterprise Applications

  • CI/CD pipelines with CodeBuild and CodePipeline
  • Financial services platforms with regulatory compliance
  • Media transcoding and content processing workflows

Customer Success Stories (2024-2025)

Vanguard - Financial Services

  • Challenge: 2,000+ developers, strict compliance requirements
  • Solution: Fargate with ECS for microservices architecture
  • Results: 50% cost reduction, improved security isolation

United Airlines - Travel Industry

  • Challenge: Rapid mobile application deployment
  • Solution: Fargate with EKS for containerized applications
  • Results: Reduced deployment time from months to 60 days

Flywire - Fintech

  • Challenge: Global payment processing scalability
  • Solution: Fargate Spot for batch processing, ECS for APIs
  • Results: 60% faster startup, 70% compute cost savings

WOMBO - AI/ML Startup

  • Challenge: Unpredictable AI workload scaling
  • Solution: Fargate with auto-scaling for ML inference
  • Results: Infrastructure on “autopilot”, focus on product development

Additional Resources

Complete case studies

Thank you!