How Secure is AWS Fargate?
IronWorker is a prominent competitor to AWS Fargate, a worker system which truly rivals and runs alongside its alternatives with its parallel worker system. Here's a bit of a comparison between the two, in particular with regards to security and functionality.
- Fargate was developed as a secure system resistant to user errors
- Fargate runs tasks within specific containers
- Systems under Fargate eliminate any unnecessary computer functions or processes, thereby enhancing security and efficiency
- Fargate isolate tasks using Amazon-developed ECS and EKS
- Fargate manages the ECS and EKS in a closed system, taking control away from users
- To control Fargate processes, users often have to employ additional third-party applications and customize their network
- IronWorker uses the much more user-friendly parallel task management
Table of Contents
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AWS Fargate is Part of the Amazon Ecosystem
Fargate, created by and for AWS, was created from the get-go as a user-friendly, secure, and resistant to user errors. The inherent security of this product is arguably the main feature that draws in users, allowing them to complete tasks in a very controlled, unadulterated way.
Users are able to create applications and run tasks within their own kernels, optimizing the amount of compute used in the process. With this workload optimization, there is a financial benefit as well, as users only pay for what they use to run each, individual container.
The systems employed under Fargate revolve around securely running each process in ways that reduce any unnecessary computer functions or interference from other processes, leaving Fargate with repudiable efficiency and security.
The two most prominent methods of maintaining this security are the stable design of Fargate as well as a series of Fargate-related services that help users manage and observe the system in a controlled, closed source environment.
The primary benefit of AWS Fargate is its complete and deliberate isolation of tasks, with the main, and primary goal being absolute stability of each container running on its own, unmanaged. The two building blocks that allow it to run as smoothly as it does are the Elastic Container Service (ECS) and the Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). These two methods for running tasks are also resources built by Amazon, and are the fundamental tool in optimizing the compute power necessary to run applications in a container.
IronWorker Uses Parallel Task Management
IronWorker carries out similar tasks as AWS Fargate, by using parallel task management.
Each individual task carried out does so in isolation, without overloading CPU or sharing kernel with other tasks. Each task is focused on individually and intensely without being interrupted or having compute resources redirected towards other tasks. This bestows a reliable stability to each container deploying an application.
The Container System, explained
These containers are managed within Kubernetes pods, which are a server-less method of managing containers within a series of individual pods, ultimately maximizing the amount of attention and focus each container will receive by placing one single pod over each container, rather than grouping them together under one, common umbrella pod. Basically, each task lies within a container, each container lies within a pod, and each pod is managed by the Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
The sheer amount of fixation each container receives under each pod is one of the facets that delivers the celebrated security of Fargate. This method also redirects user energy that would otherwise be spent essentially supervising processes towards managing a Fargate account, which does the work as efficiently as possible, instead.
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Is AWS' Closed-Source System Secure?
With the luxury of ECS and EKS being optimized and run automatically, there are two slight drawbacks, which are the management of each service by the user, as well as the financial cost of having both services run and optimized by Fargate, in a way that discourages user interference. However, this design is arguably the biggest cornerstone in AWS Fargate's noted security of operations.
EKS, itself, is an open-source management tool, where if one has the time and know-how, they may utilize it hands-on. Fargate, however, as a management system for these two services, is closed-source, with an aim towards running each container not only without interferences from other containers, but without interference from users as well. However, this closed source system may prevent good management from skilled coders, where it might be useful, a feature which is often attacked with haphazard code from users seeking to more intimately control the processes of their own containers and pods in a closed source environment.
AWS Fargate aptly responds to the inherent need of the user to control their own processes by offering a monolith of third-party services, which focus primarily on user observation of containers and pods. These services not only highly compatible with Fargate, but somewhat of a necessity, in terms of managing one's own processes.
One of these tools is Amazon Cloudwatch, which provides an open interface for monitoring one's services, containers and pods. While this tool is user-friendly, provides data logs on the health of one's applications, and generally allows for a bit of management within the AWS system, it is still closed source, and doesn't allow for much code tampering, arguably a feature of its own security as a service.
While the security and stability of Fargate's closed source system is an inherent feature, many users still find themselves wishing for more control, in terms of network customization. Oftentimes this leads to haphazard source code from users, that Fargate does a thorough job of handling, not only in terms of pods and containers, but also in terms of privatized computing resources within the public cloud environment, as a whole.
The main platform for these more external processes is a closed source feature for Fargate called the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), that users can create using the main hub, AWS Management Console. This feature allows a broad range of customization over a slew of factors, such as a user's virtual networking environment. One can also easily manage network gateways, create subnets, and oversee their own IP address range. This allows each user to have closer and more focused control over their own resources and data, creating a personalized, yet very secure infrastructure.
These features, all being closed source, as AWS Fargate is, operate on the premise of functionality and security, that need not (nor cannot) be tested by users. Therefore, they work to secure and in tandem with their good reputation of stability and security.
Most commonly used competitors to AWS Fargate are ones which lie on either side of Fargate's specific mode of user control. On one end is the Google Kubernetes Engine, which is also closed source, and on the opposite end, there are options such as Rancher, an open source platform which deals with the Kubernetes and container system directly, but requires user knowledge and agility.
Despite the emphasis on security that Fargate offers, it does a superb job of also providing user functions, while maintaining that security of container isolation, user observation, and privatized virtual networking environments.
While some consumers of the platform may bemoan the lack of control offered by Fargate, the system itself allows as much user control as possible, while maintaining a closed source security and emphasis on the most efficient implementation of user applications possible, without sacrificing this security for the sake of user sovereignty.
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