Overview
The Lightweight pattern uses Fargate Spot to run your containers at a significant discount compared to on-demand Fargate pricing. It is a good fit for simple applications, internal tools, and workloads that can tolerate occasional interruptions.What’s Included
- ECS on Fargate Spot (up to 70% cost savings)
- RDS Instance in single AZ
- Application Load Balancer
- Basic monitoring
Architecture
Generated Infrastructure
Specifications
Compute (ECS on Fargate Spot)
- Capacity provider: FARGATE_SPOT (up to 70% savings vs on-demand)
- CPU: 256 units (0.25 vCPU)
- Memory: 512 MiB
- Tasks: 1 (scales up to 3)
- Availability: 2 AZ
Database (RDS Instance)
- Engine: PostgreSQL 17.5
- Instance: t4g.small
- Storage: 20 GB gp3
- Backup: 7-day retention
- Multi-AZ: No (single AZ)
Networking
- VPC: 2 AZ setup
- Subnets: Public and private
- Load Balancer: Basic ALB
- NAT: 1 NAT gateway
Cost Comparison
| Pattern | Monthly Cost | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Tinkerer | $0* | 2 AZ, EC2 direct access |
| Lightweight | ~$35 | 2 AZ, Fargate Spot |
| Standard | ~$86 | Multi-AZ capable |
| Resilient | ~$150+ | Multi-AZ, enhanced monitoring |
Use Cases
Perfect for:- Internal tools
- Development environments
- Low-traffic websites
- Simple APIs
- Prototypes going to production
- Cost-sensitive projects
- High availability requirements (Spot tasks can be interrupted)
- Mission-critical applications
- High traffic loads
- Multi-region needs
Key Differences from Standard
| Feature | Lightweight | Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity provider | FARGATE_SPOT | FARGATE |
| CPU | 256 | 512 |
| Memory | 512 MiB | 1024 MiB |
| Default tasks | 1 | 2 |
| Max tasks | 3 | 5 |
| Interruption risk | Yes (Spot) | No |
| Cost | ~40% cheaper | Full price, full reliability |
Customisation
Upgrading to On-Demand Fargate
If you need guaranteed capacity, switch the capacity provider:Upgrading Database
Monitoring
Basic CloudWatch monitoring includes:- ECS service health
- RDS basic metrics
- ALB request count
- Application logs
Upgrade Path
To Standard Pattern
- Change capacity provider to
FARGATE - Increase CPU to 512 and memory to 1024 MiB
- Increase desired count to 2 for high availability
To Resilient Pattern
- Migrate database to Aurora
- Increase task count and scaling limits
- Add KMS encryption
Security Considerations
Network Security
- Private subnets for database
- Security groups with minimal rules
- No direct internet access for compute
Data Security
- Encryption at rest enabled
- TLS for data in transit
- Secrets in AWS Secrets Manager
Best Practices
- Start with Lightweight for new projects that do not need guaranteed uptime
- Monitor Spot interruptions via CloudWatch
- Regular backups even with automation
- Plan for growth but do not over-provision
- Use caching to maximise performance
- Keep it simple. Complexity adds cost
Next Steps
Deploy an Application
Deploy your Lightweight application to AWS
Add Resources
Add databases, storage, and more to your application
Compute Factory
Customise the compute configuration
Storage Factory
Configure S3 storage for your application