Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon ECS VS LXC

Compare Amazon ECS VS LXC and see what are their differences

Amazon ECS logo Amazon ECS

Amazon EC2 Container Service is a highly scalable, high-performance​ container management service that supports Docker containers.

LXC logo LXC

LXC by Linuxcontainers.org is a set of tools, templates, library and language bindings. It's pretty low level, very flexible and covers just about every containment feature supported by the upstream kernel.
  • Amazon ECS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-05
  • LXC Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

Amazon ECS features and specs

  • Cost-Effective
    Amazon ECS allows you to run only the computing resources you need. You can scale your services up or down based on demand, optimizing costs efficiently.
  • Integration with AWS Services
    ECS seamlessly integrates with other AWS services like IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and more, providing a cohesive and robust ecosystem for your applications.
  • Ease of Use
    ECS is managed by AWS, reducing the complexity of setting up, operating, and scaling containerized applications. It handles orchestration tasks, simplifying deployment and management.
  • Security
    Offers strong security features like IAM roles for tasks, fine-tuned network policies, and encrypted traffic between services, ensuring robust security for your applications.
  • High Availability
    ECS leverages AWS’s global infrastructure, enabling you to deploy applications across multiple availability zones for high availability and fault tolerance.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon ECS

  • Complexity in Hybrid Environments
    Integrating ECS with non-AWS components in a hybrid cloud setup can be complex, requiring additional configuration and management effort.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Being tightly integrated with AWS services means that migrating away from ECS to another container orchestration platform could be challenging and time-consuming.
  • Learning Curve
    While ECS simplifies many tasks, users still need to understand AWS services and best practices, creating a learning curve for those new to the AWS ecosystem.
  • Limited Multi-Cloud Support
    Unlike Kubernetes, which can be deployed in multi-cloud environments, ECS is mainly optimized for AWS, limiting its flexibility in multi-cloud strategies.
  • Dependency on AWS Infrastructure
    The performance and availability of ECS are dependent on AWS infrastructure, making it less appealing for organizations that need infrastructure independence.

LXC features and specs

  • Lightweight
    LXC containers share the host operating system's kernel, resulting in lower overhead compared to virtual machines. This means higher efficiency and speed, ideal for applications requiring fast start-up times and lower resource usage.
  • Resource Isolation
    LXC provides a level of resource isolation, allowing users to manage CPU, memory, and other resources per container, which helps in optimizing resource allocation and ensuring better performance.
  • Flexibility
    LXC offers a high degree of flexibility, allowing users to run a variety of workloads, from simple applications to complex, multi-service environments, due to its lightweight nature and ease of management.
  • Security
    LXC provides a secure environment through namespace isolation, cgroups, and other Linux security modules, enhancing the security by isolating the processes within containers from the host system.
  • Ecosystem and Support
    LXC benefits from a robust ecosystem and community support, providing numerous tools and integrations with other systems, making it easier to deploy, manage, and orchestrate containers.

Possible disadvantages of LXC

  • Complex Networking
    Setting up advanced networking configurations can be complicated in LXC, as it may require manual intervention and a deep understanding of networking concepts to achieve the desired network setup.
  • Learning Curve
    For users new to Linux containers, the learning curve might be steep, requiring a solid understanding of Linux kernel features and command-line operations to effectively use LXC.
  • Not a Full Virtualization
    As an OS-level virtualization, LXC shares the host’s kernel, limiting its use to scenarios where the same OS family is required. Unlike full VMs, it cannot run operating systems with different kernels.
  • Security Concerns
    Although LXC improves security by isolating processes, it is not as secure as traditional virtual machines where the hypervisor provides separation, as containers share the host's kernel.
  • Limited Windows Support
    LXC is primarily designed for Linux environments, which limits its usability in Windows-based infrastructures unless used through compatibility layers or subsystems, which may add complexity.

Analysis of Amazon ECS

Overall verdict

  • Amazon ECS is a good choice for organizations that are heavily invested in the AWS ecosystem and require a managed container orchestration service. It is a stable and reliable option with comprehensive features and excellent performance, especially for large-scale deployments.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a highly scalable and fast container management service that simplifies running, stopping, and managing containers on a cluster. ECS provides seamless integration with the AWS ecosystem, offering robust security, scalability, and reliability. It eliminates the need for cluster management, allowing teams to focus on their applications. Additionally, ECS is deeply integrated with Amazon services like IAM, CloudWatch, ALB, VPC, and others, making it a preferred choice for AWS users.

Recommended for

    ECS is recommended for development teams that prefer AWS-managed solutions, organizations seeking to streamline container deployments, and companies looking for secure and scalable orchestration without the overhead of managing Kubernetes. It is also ideal for enterprises that require tight integration with other AWS services.

Amazon ECS videos

Amazon ECS: Core Concepts

LXC videos

TRIBE ARCHIPELAGO LXC PRESET REVIEW (PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM CC)

More videos:

  • Demo - LXC VS INDIA EARL PRESETS | REVIEW + DEMO
  • Review - Watch Before You Buy! Cocraft LXC CS18 - Review [0034]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon ECS and LXC)
Developer Tools
84 84%
16% 16
Cloud Computing
58 58%
42% 42
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Virtualization
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon ECS and LXC

Amazon ECS Reviews

The Top 7 Kubernetes Alternatives for Container Orchestration
Amazon ECS is a flexible, high-performing, scalable container management solution compatible with Docker containers that let you run your applications on a controlled group of Amazon EC2 instances. Through Amazon ECS, you don’t have to set up and manage the cluster’s management infrastructure or set up tasks. You can use the management tools of AWS Console or SDKs, AWS CLI...
Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
If you are looking for great backup recovery and building cloud-native applications, then AWS Fartgate is one of the best tools. If you initially want to do POCs without investing much in infrastructure, then Amazon ECS is a good choice because of its pay per use pricing model.

LXC Reviews

Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
LXC is the acronym for Linux Containers which is a type of OS-level virtualization method for executing numerous isolated Linux systems(containers) sitting on a control host employing a single Linux Kernel. This is an open source tool under the GNU LGPL License. It is available on the GitHub Repository.
Docker Alternatives
The 3 main components of LXC Container include LXC, LXD which is the runtime component, a Daemon thread developed in GO. This component manages containers and images. The third component is LXFUSE. This component manages the file systems. LXC is an older, more popular but a lower level set of tools. LXD component expands on LXC thus offering a better User Interface and CLI...
Source: www.educba.com
5 Container Alternatives to Docker
Next up, 1 percent of containers were LXC Linux Containers in 2018. Nicknamed “chroot on steroids,” LXC dates back before Docker picked up steam. Thus, LXC has a pretty active community around it.

Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon ECS might be a bit more popular than LXC. We know about 52 links to it since March 2021 and only 38 links to LXC. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon ECS mentions (52)

  • AWS ECS vs Sliplane
    Amazon's Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Sliplane both simplify deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. However, there are some key differences, and both platforms serve different users and use cases. Let's compare them side by side. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Top 8 Docker Alternatives to Consider in 2025
    AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) provide managed container orchestration platforms integrated with AWS infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Day 3: What is Docker and why should I care?
    Most cloud platforms support Docker containers. Sliplane, Fly.io, AWS, Google Cloud, etc. This means that you can easily switch between cloud providers if you want to, without having to change your software. If you ever migrated from one cloud provider to another, you probably know how much work this can be. With Docker, you can just take your container image and run it on the new platform. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • The New Dev's Guide to Externalizing App Config
    In containerized environments like Kubernetes or Amazon ECS, configuration is often injected as environment variables or mounted as files. Your app starts up with fresh values every time—no rebuilds needed. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Large-scale Data Processing with Step Functions : AWS Project
    The workers in this example are containers, running in Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) with an Amazon Fargate Capacity Provider . Though the workers could potentially run almost anywhere so long as they had access to poll the Step Functions Activity and report SUCCESS/FAILURE back to Step Functions. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

LXC mentions (38)

  • Beyond Docker - A DevOps Engineer's Guide to Container Alternatives
    Working with legacy applications that needed full system access taught me that a different way to do containerization is by using LXC/LXD. The focus in system containers, rather than application containers, can be thought of like a light VM rather than what most consider the typical container. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Top 8 Docker Alternatives to Consider in 2025
    LXC provides system-level containerization, offering a different approach focused on creating environments that more closely resemble traditional virtual machines. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • RunCVM: An open-source Docker runtime for launching container images in VMs
    What situations would make this better than LXC? https://linuxcontainers.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Top 5 Docker Alternatives for Software Developers in 2024
    Linux Container Daemon (LXD) is a container and virtual machine manager developed by Canonical. It provides flexibility by offering a single process for multiple containers. It connects to the Linux container library (LXC) using a REST API. It is an add-on to LXC, providing more features and functionalities. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • A Brief History Of Serverless
    Docker introduced their new container technology at PyCon 2013. At this time, Docker containers were just a wrapper for Linux Containers but this fundamentally changed the landscape of computing (more on this later). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon ECS and LXC, you can also consider the following products

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

VirtualBox - VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as...

Docker - Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

Proxmox VE - Proxmox is an open-source server virtualization management solution that offers the ability to manage virtual server technology with the Linux OpenVZ and KVM technology.

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Hyper-V - Install Hyper-V on Windows 10