---
layout: docs
page_title: AWS ECS
description: >-
  Consul Service Mesh can be deployed on AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service).
  This section documents the official installation of Consul on ECS.
---

# AWS ECS

You can deploy Consul service mesh applications to [AWS Elastic Container Service](https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/) (ECS) using either our official [Terraform modules](/docs/ecs/terraform/install) or by [manually configuring the task definition](/docs/ecs/manual/install).

## Service Mesh

Using Consul on AWS ECS enables you to add your ECS tasks to the service mesh and
take advantage of features such as zero-trust-security, intentions, observability,
traffic policy, and more. You can also connect service meshes so that services deployed across your infrastructure environments can communicate.

## Architecture

![Consul on ECS Architecture](/img/consul-ecs-arch.png)

Consul on ECS follows an [architecture](/docs/internals/architecture) similar to other platforms, but each ECS task is a
Consul node. An ECS task runs the user application container(s), as well as a Consul client container for control plane
communication and an [Envoy](https://envoyproxy.io/) sidecar proxy container to facilitate data plane communication for
[Consul Connect](/docs/connect).

For a detailed architecture overview, see the [Architecture](/docs/ecs/architecture) page.

## Getting Started

There are several ways to get started with Consul with ECS.

* The [Serverless Consul Service Mesh with ECS and HCP](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/consul-ecs-hcp?utm_source=docs) learn guide shows how to use Terraform to run Consul service mesh applications on ECS with managed Consul servers running in HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP).
* The [Service Mesh with ECS and Consul on EC2](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/consul-ecs-ec2?utm_source=docs) learn guide shows how to use Terraform to run Consul service mesh applications on ECS with Consul servers running on EC2 instances.
* The [Consul with Dev Server on Fargate](https://registry.terraform.io/modules/hashicorp/consul-ecs/aws/latest/examples/dev-server-fargate) example installation deploys a sample application in ECS using the Fargate launch type.
* The [Consul with Dev Server on EC2](https://registry.terraform.io/modules/hashicorp/consul-ecs/aws/latest/examples/dev-server-ec2) example installation deploys a sample application in ECS using the EC2 launch type.

Refer to the [Requirements](/docs/ecs/requirements) and use one of the following sets of instructions when you're ready to install Consul on an existing ECS cluster and add tasks to the service mesh: 
* [Install with Terraform](/docs/ecs/terraform/install) 
* [Install Manually](/docs/ecs/manual/install)